14 Quotes & Sayings By Villiers De Lisleadam

Villiers de L'Isle-Adam (1766–1848) was a French nobleman, chemist, physicist and naturalist. He is best known for his work in chemistry. His early experiments with electricity led him to investigate the nature of magnetism. After discovering that iron filings placed near a piece of amber caused it to glow, he is credited with being the first person to isolate the substance responsible for this glow Read more

He also studied the properties of iron and is credited with discovering rusting, which is now known as galvanic corrosion. As a naturalist, he was interested in geology, in particular in rocks found in the Iton valley in France. He was the first to describe several species of plants and animals new to science.

I am a man who knows nothing, guesses sometimes, finds...
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I am a man who knows nothing, guesses sometimes, finds frequently and who's always amazed. Villiers De LIsleAdam
I have come with this message: since our gods and...
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I have come with this message: since our gods and our aspirations are no longer anything but scientific, why shouldn't our loves be so too? Villiers De LIsleAdam
Within this new work of art a creature from beyond...
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Within this new work of art a creature from beyond the reach of Humanity has insinuated herself and now lurks there at the heart of the mystery, a power unimagined before our time. Villiers De LIsleAdam
Brunettes are full of electricity.
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Brunettes are full of electricity. Villiers De LIsleAdam
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Nature was quick to pass the sponge of her deluges over these awkward sketches (dinosaurs), these first nightmares of Life. Villiers De LIsleAdam
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There are some wounds that one can heal only by deepening them and making them worse. Villiers De LIsleAdam
7
Uncertainty is a quality to be cherished, therefore — if not for it, who would dare to undertake anything? Villiers De LIsleAdam
8
There are even some stars so remote that their light will reach the Earth only when Earth itself is a dead planet, as they themselves are dead, so that the living Earth will never be visited by that forlorn ray of light, without a living source, without a living destination. Often on fine nights when the park of this establishment is vacant, I amuse myself with this marvelous instrument (telescope). I go upstairs, walk across the grass, sit on a bench in the Avenue of Oaks — and there, in my solitude, I enjoy the pleasure of weighing the rays of dead stars. Villiers De LIsleAdam
9
Thoughts and feelings change sometimes, as one crosses the frontiers. Villiers De LIsleAdam
10
Dead voices, lost sounds, forgotten noises, vibrations lockstepping into the abyss and now too distant ever to be recaptured!. .. What sort of arrows would be able to transfix such birds? Villiers De LIsleAdam
11
Consider this: when you stand at the entry to a steel factory, you can make out through the smoke some men, some metal, the fires. The furnaces roar, the hammers crash; and the metalworkers who forge ingots, weapons, tools, and so on are completely ignorant of the real uses to which their products will be put. The workers can only refer to their products by conventional names. Well, that's where we all stand, all of us! Nobody can see the real character of what he creates because every knife blade may become a dagger, and the use to which an object is put changes both its name and its nature. Only our ignorance shields us from terrible responsibilities. Villiers De LIsleAdam
12
If I could record them and transmit them to the present age, they would constitute nothing more, nowadays, than dead sounds. They would be, in a word, sounds other than what they actually were, and from what their phonographic labels pretended they were — since it's in ourselves that the silence exists. It was while the sounds were still mysterious that it would have been really interesting to render the mystery palpable and transferable. Villiers De LIsleAdam
13
And in any case...there are no more supernatural noises nowadays... Villiers De LIsleAdam