“To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.”

— Paul Valéry

Unsourced

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees." by Paul Valéry?

Paul Valéry 89

French poet, essayist, and philosopher 1871–1945

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Source: Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, 1979, p. 30

“It is easier for me to see everything as one thing than to see one thing as one thing.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Me es más fácil ver todas las cosas como una cosa sola, que ver una cosa como una cosa sola.
Voces (1943)

“No one likes to see a government folder with his name on it.”

Stephen King book Firestarter

Source: Firestarter

“Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

Source: Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935), Ch. 23

“Mimì never forgets to see the beauty in life.”

Megan Marie Hart (1983) American opera singer

Original: (de) Mimi vergisst nie, die Schönheit im Leben zu sehen, und ist nicht verbittert.
Variant: Mimi never forgets to see the beauty in life and is not bitter.
Source: https://www.frizzmag.de/kultur-freizeit/kultur--buehne/La-Boheme-neue-Version-Staatstheater/
Context: Mimì is a character in Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème. Although she is terminally ill, she enjoys life.

“The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

Letter to "Micheal" (16 February 1970), Micheal was a 10 year old boy who had inquired in a letter as to whether Fuller was a "doer" or a "thinker".
1970s
Context: The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done — that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.

“Tis pleasure, sure, to see one's name in print;
A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.”

George Gordon Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

Source: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Line 51.

“See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

“To govern well, one must see things as they are.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Our America (1881)

“The general root of superstition : namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Sylva Sylvarum Century X (1627)
Source: The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon
Context: It is true that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

“To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Paul Valéry 89

Related quotes

Related topics