Top 120 Paul Valéry Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.”

— Paul Valéry

52. “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

53. “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

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

— 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. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

58. “Nothing beautiful can be summarized.”

— Paul Valéry

59. “The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

61. “The mind has transformed the world, and the world is repaying it with interest. It has led man where he had no idea how to go.”

— Paul Valéry

62. “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

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

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

65. “A man’s true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.”

— Paul Valéry

66. “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

67. “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

68. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

69. “Every man expects some miracle – either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.”

— Paul Valéry

70. “Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This is a precious gift.”

— Paul Valéry

71. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

73. “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

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

— Paul Valéry

75. “Though completely armed with knowledge and endowed with power, we are blind and impotent in a world we have equipped and organized-a world of which we now fear the inextricable complexity.”

— Paul Valéry

76. “A poet’s work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.”

— Paul Valéry

77. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

79. “My poems mean what people take them to mean.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

83. “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.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

87. “To penetrate one’s being, one must go armed to the teeth.”

— Paul Valéry

88. “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

89. “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

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

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

93. “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

94. “We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.”

— Paul Valéry

95. “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

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

— Paul Valéry

97. “The “determinist” swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression “know everything” means nothing.”

— Paul Valéry

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

— Paul Valéry

99. “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

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

— Paul Valéry