What is doubtful or mediocre needs approving voices to give its author pleasure. But what is perfect carries with it the conviction of its beauty.

November 17.

... It is a witticism he could not sneeze out.

And the best pleasures books can give them, let them at least taste them, since...

To the Greeks (and especially the Athenians), the literary and civil beautiful. To the Romans, the moral and political beautiful. To the Jews, the religious and domestic beautiful. To the other peoples, the imitation of those three.

The Chinese have a kind of philosophical and methodical beautiful.

When care has produced elegance, it becomes, through that agreeableness, facility. Ease matters in the work, but not in the worker, except for his own pleasure. For the reader’s pleasure it is enough that pains have produced ease. When a work smells of the file, it is because it is not polished enough; and if it smells of oil, it is because one has kept too little vigil.

November 20.

“An extent devoid of matter.” Aristotle’s expression; applicable to Plato, who is nevertheless worth more than he is, that is, is more beautiful, greater, more divine.

The ancients said that an overly adorned discourse “had no manners,” that is, did not express the character and inclinations of the speaker. All that, indeed, can show only our riches, our art, our literary habits.

The step of a man who walks to the movement of the pulse [is] monotonous, and one can even notate it. But this uniformity, this repetition of the same cadence, bores neither him nor others because there is in him and in everyone a corresponding monotony that is necessary, universal, and an accord with our tastes by nature and by habit. There is also a step of the soul, a measure of attention equivalent to eight pulsations in the pulse. (Sic.)

November 14

Episodes. [They] can make the poet’s fabric stronger (by making the story more plausible) through interweaving. The second story, in mingling with the first, seems to give it more existence, accustoms the mind to finding more reality in it through a longer duration.

November 16.

Aristotle requires that, to avoid being too long, an epic poem be capable of being read in its entirety in one day.

November 21.

The right extent. Lafontaine has it in his fables; Aesop does not, nor does Phaedrus. In these three authors one finds the painter’s three operations: in Aesop the sketch, in Phaedrus the finished drawing (with a wash), in Lafontaine the painting.

A drop of light is worth more than an ocean of darkness: worth more, I say, whether to give or to receive.