Quotes by Paul Valery

About Paul Valery:

Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 12 different years.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Paul Valery

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

Paul Valery

Degas is one of the very few painters who have given the floor its true importance.

Paul Valery

Les livres ont les mêmes ennemis que l'homme : le feu, l'humide, les bêtes, le temps, et leur propre contenu.

Paul Valery

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 Valery

Life blackens at the contact of truth.

Paul Valery

What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.

Paul Valery

To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.

Paul Valery

Poems are never finished - just abandoned

Paul Valery

Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.

Paul Valery

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

Paul Valery

Science is a collection of successful recipes.

Paul Valery

Those who cannot attack the thought, instead attack the thinker.

Paul Valery

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

Everything simple is false. Everything complex is unusable.

Paul Valery

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

Paul Valery

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

Paul Valery

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

Paul Valery

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

Paul Valery

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 Valery

The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.

Paul Valery

Author Bio

  • NamePaul Valery
  • DescriptionFrench poet, essayist, and philosopher
  • BornOctober 30, 1871
  • DiedJuly 20, 1945
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Poet; Journalist; Writer; Essayist