Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.
What do you say to luxury without beauty? Solidity may suffice for what is necessary. But charm is necessary to the superfluous.
All naïveté runs the risk of ridicule and deserves none. In all naïveté there is trust without reflection. — All naïveté is evidence of innocence.
We must keep to a great moral sense and a great poetic sense, for we do not have the other, I mean the civil and political sense, the one whose object is the things of life more than the things of the mind.
February […]1.
The ease that comes from care, and not the ease that comes from negligence.
Fontanes wrote to me in 1786: “... It is by no means certain that the perfection to which you aspire is not a chimerical goal... Besides, who will perceive it and give you credit for it... When I began to write, I did as you do, I wanted to take care with everything, which only served to make my style dry and hard.” Certainly he was mistaken in that, and besides, care easily makes the hardness that comes from care disappear, etc. I burned that letter this morning, I am sorry for it.
The genius of brevity.
February […]3.
Gauze applied to the lamp sifts the light.
All pleasure comes about through some movement; all pain through too much partial, excessive, or unevenly distributed movement.
When one has the kind of thoughts that permits it, or, to speak more accurately, requires it (this style). Cut a stone into facets: this form makes it rougher. Cut a diamond in this way, it becomes more beautiful.
Dry? and why not? Do you reproach marble and everything solid in the world for having this quality?
“To hold one’s soul in one’s hands or possess one’s soul in peace”: that is what is needed to live. To write, one would need to hold one’s mind in one’s hands, possess one’s mind in peace.
Thoughts or a talent that can withstand age.