1871-1945, French Poet, Essayist
A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
Paul Valery – [Thoughts and Thinking]
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery – [Poetry and Poets]
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.
Paul Valery – [Work]
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. nothing in the paper today , we sigh.
Paul Valery – [Anxiety]
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.
Paul Valery – [Self-sabotage]
Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
Paul Valery – [Truth]
Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.
Paul Valery – [Justice]
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.
Paul Valery – [Science and Scientists]
Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
Paul Valery – [Science and Scientists]
Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
Paul Valery – [Creativity]
That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
Paul Valery – [Belief]
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Paul Valery – [Future]