Paul Valery Quotes - Page 4

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

Love is acting stupid together.

The very object of an art, the principle of its artifice, is precisely to impart the impression of an ideal state in which the man who reaches it will be capable of spontaneously producing, with no effort of hesitation, a magnificent and wonderfully ordered expression of his nature and our destinies.

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

If what has happened in the one person were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the effects of art would disappear.

One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall.

Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of "truth" and the language of "creation."

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

To hit someone means to adopt his point of view.

Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.

You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it in everyday language, and which does not give rise to any difficulty when it is engaged in the rapid movement of an ordinary sentence becomes magically embarrassing, introduces a strange resistance, frustrates any effort at definition as soon as you take it out of circulation to examine it separately and look for its meaning after taking away its instantaneous function.

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

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.

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.

Conscience reigns but it does not govern.

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

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.

Cognition reigns but does not rule.

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.

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.

We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.

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.

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

Peace is a virtual, mute, sustained victory of potential powers against probable greeds

Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest.