Paul Valery Quotes

Whoever wants to accomplish great things must devote to a lot of profound thought to details.

A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.

Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives.

History justifies whatever we want it to. It teaches absolutely nothing, for it contains everything and gives examples of everything.

Cognition reigns but does not rule.

The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.

Great things are accomplished by men who are not conscious of the impotence of man. Such insensitiveness is precious. But we must admit that criminals are not unlike our heroes in this respect.

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.

We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.

My hand feels touched as well as it touches; reality says this, and nothing more.

In most cases, when the lion, weary of obeying its master, has torn and devoured him, its nerves are pacified and it looks round for another master before whom to grovel.

Photography invites one to give up any attempt to delineate such things as can delineate themselves.

It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.

Man cannot bear his own portrait. The image of his limits and his own determinacy exasperates him, drives him mad.

Sometime I think; and sometime I am.

The mind has transformed the world, and the world is repaying it with interest. It has led man where he had no idea how to go.

My soul is nothing now but the dream dreamt by matter struggling with itself!

Stupidity is not my strong suit.

From the moment that photography appeared, the descriptive genre began to invade Letters... In verse as in prose the décor and exterior aspects of life took an almost excessive place.

The folly of mistaking oneself for an oracle is built right into us.

What Degas called 'a way of seeing' must consequently bear a wide enough interpretation to include way of being, power, knowledge, and will.

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

Everything changes but the avant-garde.

The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.

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

Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This ... is a precious gift.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning we feel a certain void. 'Nothing in the paper today ' we sigh.

Peace is a virtual mute sustained victory of potential powers against probable greeds.

To penetrate one's being one must go armed to the teeth.

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.

The future, like everything else, is not what it used to be.