Most of all, I would eliminate all words which come from the tongue rather than the mind, humorous remarks of the sort we make in conversation and which after a long conversation with other people we continue to address artificially to ourselves and which fill our minds with untruths, these purely automatic remarks which, in the writer who sinks so far as to transcribe them, are accompanied by the little smile, the little grimace which constantly spoils, for example, the spoken sentence of a Sainte-Beuve, whereas true books must be the product not of daylight and chitchat but of darkness and
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