And your cities, whose destruction will not be able to offer the future a single ruin worthy of any attention. Cities of stone, and what am I saying? cities of plaster. Marble is needed.

Wretched little modern cities. Chambermaid architecture!

In the manner of Tacitus, for the drawing and the grouping, though not for the color.

J.-J. R. A man full of passions. He had them for everything. And full of himself. His Pygmalion.

February 6.

— A laugh into which more body enters than wit.

D—L—L [Delalot.] There is something tedious and mediocre in there. Now, it is not the doctrine; it is therefore the man.

February 7.

D’Ablancourt. His style is indeed full of beauties, but beauties that reveal themselves only to attention.

February 8.

The body. Like a garment that wears out.

February 9.

The ancients almost never knew quite distinctly what they thought. They dug little into their minds, occupied with the care of speaking well. They were content with the pleasure their own words gave them, seeking in reflection only what beauty they could obtain for themselves through it. People speak of their imagination; it is their taste one must speak of. It alone governed all their operations.

Applying their discernment to what was beautiful, fitting [rather] than to what was etc. Even their philosophers were only beautiful writers whose taste was more austere.

February 10.

To what degree taste is genius.

February […].

Taste serves more often as a measure of pleasure than as a rule or a discernment of what is good.

In the search for truth, what leads to obscurity, in the search for happiness, what leads to discontent, is not founded on reasons that can detain a sound mind. All that bars its goal.

Whoever rests there always stops along the way.

Light or repose are, in every kind of science and consideration, the only goal at which one should stop. But repose must often take the place of light there, and light must take the place of repose.