Paul Valery Quotes

In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quantity of anything without changing its quality. Similar figures exist only in pure geometry.

What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion; what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.

There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.

The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.

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

Thanks to photography, the eye grew accustomed to anticipate what it should see and to see it; and it learned not to see nonexistent things which, hitherto, it had seen so clearly.

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

to live means to lack something at every moment

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

The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.

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

The dog has made man their God, if the dog was an atheist, it would be perfect.

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

Sometimes I think, sometimes I am .

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

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

His heart is a desert island.... The whole scope, the whole energy of his mind surround and protect him; his depths isolate him and guard him against the truth. He flatters himself that he is entirely alone there.... Patience, dear lady. Perhaps, one day, he will discover some footprint on the sand.... What holy and happy terror, what salutary fright, once he recognizes in that pure sign of grace that his island is mysteriously inhabited!

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

One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.

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

Every beginning is a consequence - every beginning ends some thing.

It seems to me that the soul, when alone with itself and speaking to itself, uses only a small number of words, none of them extraordinary.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by educating themselves, others, unable to so much as conceive of making use of it, let it waste away. Quite on the contrary, we should search for it assiduously in what we think we know best. Leaf through a dictionary or try to make one, and you will find that every word covers and masks a well so bottomless that the questions you toss into it arouse no more than an echo.

Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

The mere notion of photography, when we introduce it into our meditation on the genesis of historical knowledge and its true value, suggests the simple question: Could such and such a fact, as it is narrated here, have been photographed?

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

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

We are wont to condemn self-love; but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.

Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.

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

History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.

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

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

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.

Power without abuse loses its charm.

One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall.

Thought must be hidden in the verse like nutritional virtue in a fruit.

An attitude of permanent indignation signifies great mental poverty. Politics compels it votaries to take that line and you can see their minds growing more impoverished every day, from one burst of righteous indignation to the next.

Love is being stupid together.

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

A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas.

Growing nations should remember that, in nature, no tree, though placed in the best conditions of light, soil, and plot, can continue to grow and spread indefinitely.

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

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

We must always apologize for talking painting.

A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.

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