CXLI
With regard to physical love and, in fact, physical pleasure, the disposition of the two sexes is not the same. Unlike men, practically all women are at least susceptible in secret to one kind of love. Ever after opening her first novel at fifteen, a woman is silently waiting for the coming of passion-love, and towards twenty, when she is just over the irresponsibility of life's first flush, the suspense redoubles. As for men, they think love impossible or ridiculous, almost before they are thirty.
CXLII
From the age of six we grow used to run after pleasure in our parents' footsteps.
The pride of Contessina Nella's mother was the starting-point of that charming woman's troubles, and by the same insane pride she now makes them hopeless. (Venice, 1819.)
CXLIII
Romanticism
I hear from Paris that there are heaps and heaps of pictures to be seen there (Exhibition of 1822), representing subjects taken from the Bible, painted by artists who hardly believe in it, admired and criticised by people who don't believe, and finally paid for by people who don't believe.
After that—you ask why art is decadent.
The artist who does not believe what he is saying is always afraid of appearing exaggerated or ridiculous. How is he to touch the sublime? Nothing uplifts him. (Lettera di Roma, Giugno, 1822.)