description
The personal blog of Brian McBreen. Items of interest, topics of study and the occasional essay.
“Except in exceptional circumstances, I don’t like consulting books on matters which seem to me to be capable of being worked upon and dealt with through isolated mental activity, on the basis of direct personal observation.”
— Paul Valéry
“The things I most like to read, which force me to read them - and re-read them - are those I feel are moving me forward the most, which are not concerned with local matters, but growth, promise, extension - an outward detour which leads me back to myself, more enlightened and better armed.”
— Paul Valéry
“Painters in the grand style were not concerned with style - they drew with clarity and rigor. Style was born from their work, and just as thought does not think about the sound of its voice nor even the rhythm, but creates them through its act - so they did not … Style must arise naturally from one’s attention to an object and it disappears as the awareness of this attention decreases.”
— Paul Valéry
“The separation of the sciences and the arts is merely a matter of convention and convenience. But in thinking and acting, man transcends these categories which are simply particular acts. Each one implicitly contains the other.”
— Paul Valéry
“Disgusted with being right, with doing what succeeds, with the effectiveness of methods, try something else.”
— Paul Valéry
“Books have the same enemies as people; fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.”
— Paul Valéry
“Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.”
— Paul Valéry
“Every man creates, without knowing it - Just as he breathes - But the artist feels himself creating - His act engages his whole being - His beloved pains fortify him”
— Paul Valéry, Inscription at the Palais de Chaillot
“Thinker ! This ridiculous name — Yet it’s possible to find a man, neither philosopher nor poet, who can’t be defined by the object of his thought, nor by the quest for an external result, a book, a doctrine, a field of science, a truth… but who is a thinker in the way one is a dancer, making use of his mind as the latter uses his muscles and his nerves; someone who, perceiving his mental images and his expectations, his types of language and his possibilities, what he’s attentive to, his freedom of movement, his vagueness and precision, - perceives, predicts, specifies or abandons, gives himself free rein or denies it - circumscribing, outlining, possessing and losing himself… an artist not so much of knowledge as of his own self - which he prefers to all knowledge; for the latter is only ever the specific act which he himself can, in fact, always refine and make more true, more elegant, more astonishing, more universal or more singular - etc.”
— Paul Valéry
