What Makes Sovereign Ugliness Are Our Conventions.

The So-called Conscientiousness Of The Majority Of Painters Is Only Perfection Applied To The Art Of Boring.

I Live In Company With A Body, A Silent Companion, Exacting And Eternal.

The True Wisdom Of The Philosopher Ought To Insist In Enjoying Everything. Yet We Apply Ourselves To Dissecting And Destroying Everything That Is Good In Itself, That Has Virtue, Albeit The Virtue There Is In Mere Illusions. Nature Gives Us This Life Like A Toy To A Weak Child. We Want To See How It All Works; We Break Everything. There Remains In Our Hands, And Before Our Eyes, Stupid And Opened Too Late, The Sterile Wreckage, Fragments That Will Not Again Make A Whole. The Good Is So Simple.

Perhaps The Sketch Of A Work Is So Pleasing Because Everyone Can Finish It As He Chooses.

I Am Carrying Out My Plan, So Long Formulated, Of Keeping A Journal. What I Most Keenly Wish Is Not To Forget That I Am Writing For Myself Alone. Thus I Shall Always Tell The Truth, I Hope, And Thus I Shall Improve Myself. These Pages Will Reproach Me For My Changes Of Mind.