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The mere notion of photography, when we introduce it into our meditation on the genesis of historical knowledge and its true value, suggests the simple question: Could such and such a fact, as it is narrated here, have been photographed?

Paul Valery

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Paul Valery
Age: 73 †
Born: 1871
Born: October 30
Died: 1945
Died: July 20
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Poet
Professor
Writer
Cette
Paul Ambroise Valéry
Paul Ambroise Valery
Paul-Ambroise Valéry
Paul Valery
Paul-Ambroise Valery
Question
Suggests
Knowledge
Introducing
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Historical
Simple
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Fact
Mere
Narrated
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Photography
Photographed
True
Meditation
Genesis
Value
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Photography invites one to give up any attempt to delineate such things as can delineate themselves.
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A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
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The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never to suspect that our judgments judge us, and that nothing exposes our weaknesses and reveals ourselves more naively than the attitude of pronouncing upon our neighbors.
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There are two ways to aquire the niceties of life: 1) To produce them or 2) To plunder them. When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
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What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.
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Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas the interest of science lies in the art of making science.
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A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.
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If disorder is the rule with you, you will be penalized for installing order.
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We hope vaguely but dread precisely.
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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
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A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
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The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.
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An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
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Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.
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God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
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A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.
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Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.
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At times I think and at times I am.
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It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
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It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary - and not only necessary but urgent - to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate.
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