Mʳ de Bonald needs the earth. His mind has feet and no wings, or at least only wings that are very short and serve him only to walk better or faster.

April 19.

Politeness in manners and barbarity in mores, weakness through ignorance and presumption through successes, an imperfection of nature and excellence by borrowing, vices that are a thousand years old, eternal faults because they are of race, habit, and climate, virtues of cultivation that are only a day old and will not last long, a people made into what it cannot be and condemned to become what it was: such are the Russians.

April 11.

Finally (and what better can one say of a man) he had much humanity.

Humanity. Politeness is its flower, and whoever is not polite enough is not humane enough.

Of lines. Beautiful lines. Lines, the foundation of all beauty. But there are arts in which they must be visible: architecture, for example; architecture is content to adorn them. In some, indeed, they must remain pure, and nothing must alter or disguise them, as in the divisions of flower gardens and especially in avenues. For every avenue must be broad, open, straight, and as long as possible, as though to invite from afar, to call back from afar. There are other arts in which lines must carefully hide themselves; statuary, for example: they are always sufficiently hidden by colors in any well-made painting. Nature herself hides them, sinks them, and covers them over in living beings. To be beautiful, these must show little of their lines. For the skeleton is in the lines, life is in the contours: they are fuller in health.

April 12.

That is because all artists suppose man is beautiful, and they are mistaken: naked man is dreadful. Heaven did not make man beautiful, but capable of making himself beautiful.

Divided into sections, each part is beautiful; but the whole without clothes or ornaments presented everywhere a uniform skin and ill-managed joints... Besides, to be beautiful, it is enough for man to be half clothed.

Two bracelets, a diadem, a fringed belt or half-apron, and what am I saying? a well-placed fig leaf, are ornament enough.

One can break the uniformities with attitudes and conceal the ungracefulness of the joints with poses. Man is then clothed or, better said, wrapped in himself (et ipso involutus). Head: nature has clothed the head well; a head without hair is deformed. Naked or half-naked man is ugly if his head is not clothed. The bare head, if man is fully clothed, and especially if he is amply clothed, can be beautiful, even shaved.

Modesty invented ornaments. Man alone has known his deformity. He naturally knows how to distinguish the ugly from the beautiful as he does good from evil.

Animals are born clothed (and shameless). Man and the worm alone are born naked. Joints, rings, bracelets, necklaces, belts or plates at the fingers, neck, arms, loins, finally at everything that is a joining.

Too much beauty would have given too much shamelessness.

The belly beautiful in torsos, only.

The head beautiful in itself and alone, if its hair radiates. (See angels’ heads.)

The Méléagre and the Appollon have garments open with the chlamys thrown back. Art has taken away their nakedness but left them their shamelessness. The Twins have their caps; they also have a youth full of candor. The dying soldier is drawn back upon himself. The Atlas is colossal. The Venuses hide themselves with their own hands. The Laocoons are grouped, and besides, attention goes to the heads.

From the shoulder to the end of the hand, and from the chin to the extremity of the pubis, there is too long a uniformity; from the seat to the heel, the uniformity is more varied by the sinuosity of the lines with which the fold of the knee and the swellings of the leg are drawn. The head and neck continue into one another gracefully, but the neck and trunk are generally badly joined; there is an offset at the hollows of the shoulders.

Adorned lines. For life is in the “contours,” or at least health, which is a fullness of life. Fleshless features...

Clothes must enter into the idea of beauty; they make grace. Like a cushion on which attention rests better, more softly, more at ease, without fear of embarrassing.

They speak of nature; and that one must imitate her. Let them imitate her, then, let them imitate her; and let them consider that they do not imitate her mores by imitating and displaying all our forms.

All those artists know how to do well what they do; but they do not know what must be done.

Blond hair must be long, and brown hair short. Why.

The clothed man with a bare head and the naked man with a covered head.

Helmet of feathers and belts of feathers. Hollows at the heels, etc.