Luc de Clapiers Quotes
It is easier to say new things than to reconcile those which have already been said.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers. Introduction à la connaissance de l'esprit humain, suivie de Réflexions et de Maximes. Antoine-Claude Briasson, 1746.
In 1946 the maneuvering and posturing of the United Nations delegates led him to remark: Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
among the wives of the king
The Secretary argued for a preemptive war against the Soviet Union.
Most major new scientific findings are conceptually different from what the current generation of scientists have learned and been used to. It takes some time for reflection and the death of the most recalcitrant scientists. For the new generation of scientists there is no problem. Today, even college students have little trouble thinking in the framework of Einstein’s Relativity, while that was a huge problem for most when Einstein fist published at the beginning of the 20th century.
Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues was a French writer and moralist. He died at age 31, in broken health, having published the year prior—anonymously—a collection of essays and aphorisms with the encouragement of Voltaire, his friend. He first received public notice under his own name in 1797, and from 1857 on, his aphorisms became popular. In the history of French literature, his significance lies chiefly in his friendship with Voltaire (20 years his senior).
