Top 159 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Valery - Page 2

[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.

We need to wake up from a thought that lasts too long.

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.

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

Conscience reigns but it does not govern.

A limited vocabulary, but one with which you can make numerous combinations, is better than thirty thousand words that only hamper the action of the mind.

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.

Science is a collection of successful recipes.

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

Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.

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.

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

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

To hit someone means to adopt his point of view.

Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.

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.

God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.

My poems mean what people take them to mean.

History is the science of what never happens twice.

What is simple is false and what is not is useless.

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

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.

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.

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

The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never to suspect that our judgments judge us, and that nothing exposes our weaknesses and reveals ourselves more naively than the attitude of pronouncing upon our neighbors.

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.

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

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

Beware of what you do best; its bound to be a trap.

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

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

Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of "truth" and the language of "creation."

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

Do you not realise that dance is the pure act of metamorphosis?

A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.

Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives.

The very object of an art, the principle of its artifice, is precisely to impart the impression of an ideal state in which the man who reaches it will be capable of spontaneously producing, with no effort of hesitation, a magnificent and wonderfully ordered expression of his nature and our destinies.

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

The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices

Whatever we succeed in doing is a transformation of something we have failed to do. Thus, when we fail, it is only because we have given up.

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

Cognition reigns but does not rule.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.

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.

Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science.

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.

If disorder is the rule with you, you will be penalized for installing order.

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

Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.

You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it in everyday language, and which does not give rise to any difficulty when it is engaged in the rapid movement of an ordinary sentence becomes magically embarrassing, introduces a strange resistance, frustrates any effort at definition as soon as you take it out of circulation to examine it separately and look for its meaning after taking away its instantaneous function.

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

It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary - and not only necessary but urgent - to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate.

to live means to lack something at every moment