March 7.

To be beautiful, pearls need roundness; to be beautiful, diamonds need facets.

The small have few passions; they have scarcely anything but needs.

March 9.

I would content myself with saying that, the world and bodies being finite, numbers in them must be bounded like spaces.

Minute charms that make us love the small instead of the great.

In a work, whatever it may be, symmetry, apparent or hidden, is the visible or secret foundation of the pleasure we experience. It is what gives a basis to the movements excited by varieties, contrasts.

Symmetry, foundation of all beauty and all love (in the arts), whether it shows itself openly or merely makes itself felt; for it is indispensable that it be present in our works, but not always necessary that it be seen there.

And I said: in all the arts. For in animate beings it is otherwise. Since we can communicate with these otherwise than through sight and admiration, we can love in them qualities other than those that flatter the eyes, and admire [them] when they seem perfectly suited to our tastes and our use. We then judge them perfectly beautiful to the touch.

Indeed, to say that a style is numerous or has number is to say that this style contains parts that can be numbered or counted.

March 10.

Rivarol could indeed have said: — Give me time, space, matter, movement, the elements and nature, and I will make as many sentences as you please, like Buffon.

Of what is exemplary in works of art.

To flute stone; but to leave marble its roundness and its polish.

March 11.

Those abstract words that, being abstractions of abstractions, make one entirely lose sight of the realities they designate, as a society of beings for a society of men. Of men was already an abstract expression, since, without thinking of their peculiarities, one designated individuals only by their common nature.

March 12.

A musician has (they say) observed that all the phrases of Italian music seem to begin and end with a sigh.