Quotes By Paul Valery

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

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

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

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

Power without abuse loses its charm.

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

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

To write regular verses destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities, but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and totally unexpected thoughts.

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

The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.

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.

Love is being stupid together.

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.

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

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

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

Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.

Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.

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

We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.

That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.

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

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

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

At times I think and at times I am.

Politeness is organized indifference.

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.

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