Paul Valery Quotes

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

Man's great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to.

War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

Nothing beautiful can be summarized.

The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.

A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.

Love is being stupid together.

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

Let us enrich ourselves with our mutual differences.

Sometimes I think, sometimes I am .

An intelligent woman is a woman with whom one can be as stupid as one wants.

A difficulty is a light. An insurmountable difficulty is a sun.

We hope vaguely but dread precisely.

Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.

If the Ego is hateful, Love your neighbor as yourself becomes a cruel irony.

We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.

The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.

A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.

A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.

God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.

All nations have present, or past, or future reasons for thinking themselves incomparable.

It would be impossible to "love" anyone or anything one knew completely. Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object.

[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.

Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.

If the state is strong, it crushes us. If it is weak, we perish.

Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.

What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.

To hit someone means to adopt his point of view.

Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.

Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.

Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.

Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.

Politeness is organized indifference.

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

At times I think and at times I am.

Every social system is more or less against nature, and at every moment nature is at work to reclaim her rights.

If what has happened in the one person were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the effects of art would disappear.

A real writer can be recognized by the fact he doesn't find words. Therefore he must search for them and while doing that, he finds better ones.

Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.

Talent without genius isn't much, but genius without talent is nothing whatsoever.

I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.

Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.

Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our emotions.

Order always weighs on the individual. Disorder makes him wish for the police or for death. These are two extreme circumstances in which human nature is not at ease.