Re: Intermitentes y rotondas

to
choose in order to improve and not to corrupt them; and we cannot make this
choice, if they be not already improved and not corrupted. Thus a circle is
formed, and those are fortunate who escape it.

7. The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men.
Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

8. There are many people who listen to a sermon in the same way as they
listen to vespers.

9. When we wish to correct with advantage and to show another that he errs,
we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is
usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on
which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not
mistaken and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended
at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that
perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and
that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions
of our senses are always true.

10. People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have
themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

11. All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all
those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the
theatre. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate
that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all,
to that of love, principally when it is represented as very chaste and
virtuous. For the more innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they
are likely to be touched by it. Its violence pleases our self-love, which
immediately forms a desire to produce the same effects which are seen so
well represented; and, at the