Paul Valery Quotes (46 Quotes)

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

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.

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.

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

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

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

A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being the helpless prey of impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, and crowning injury inflicts upon him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.

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

Love is being stupid together.

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

Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.

History is the science of what never happens twice.

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

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

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

Politeness is organized indifference.

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

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

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

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 poem is never finished, only abandoned.

The ultimate computer, our own brain, uses only ten watts of power -- one-tenth the energy consumed by a hundred-watt bulb.

At times I think and at times I am.

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.

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.

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

We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Power without abuse loses its charm.

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

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

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

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

Everything that is simple is theoratically false, everything that is complicated is pragmatically useless.

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