Quotes By Paul Valery

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.

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

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

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.

Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.

We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.

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

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

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

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

At times I think and at times I am.

Politeness is organized indifference.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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