Top 120 Paul Valéry Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “If the state is strong, it crushes us. If it is weak, we perish.”

— Paul Valéry

52. “Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our emotions.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

54. “A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.”

— Paul Valéry

55. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

56. “Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.”

— Paul Valéry

57. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

58. “Nothing beautiful can be summarized.”

— Paul Valéry

59. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

60. “At the end of the mind, the body. But at the end of the body, the mind.”

— Paul Valéry

61. “What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.”

— Paul Valéry

62. “Stupidity is not my strong suit.”

— Paul Valéry

63. “Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.”

— Paul Valéry

64. “I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

66. “No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

68. “We must always apologize for talking painting.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

70. “A man who is ‘of sound mind’ is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

72. “Do you not realise that dance is the pure act of metamorphosis?”

— Paul Valéry

73. “The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.”

— Paul Valéry

74. “Conscience reigns but it does not govern.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

76. “A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

78. “The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.”

— Paul Valéry

79. “The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.”

— Paul Valéry

80. “Poems are never finished – just abandoned.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

82. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

84. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

87. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

89. “We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.”

— Paul Valéry

90. “Peace is a virtual, mute, sustained victory of potential powers against probable greeds.”

— Paul Valéry

91. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

92. “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 Valéry

93. “It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.”

— Paul Valéry

94. “My hand feels touched as well as it touches; reality says this, and nothing more.”

— Paul Valéry

95. “Thanks to photography, the eye grew accustomed to anticipate what it should see and to see it; and it learned not to see nonexistent things which, hitherto, it had seen so clearly.”

— Paul Valéry

96. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

97. “To be sincere means to be the same person when one is with oneself; that is to say, alone – but that is all it means.”

— Paul Valéry

98. “Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives.”

— Paul Valéry

99. “Photography invites one to give up any attempt to delineate such things as can delineate themselves.”

— Paul Valéry

100. “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 Valéry