Top 15 Paul Valéry Quotes

Poems are never finished - just abandoned

Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre!
L'air immense ouvre et referme mon livre,
La vague en poudre ose jaillir des rocs!
Envolez-vous, pages tout éblouies!
Rompez, vagues! Rompez d'eaux réjouies
Ce toit tranquille où picoraient des focs!

Politeness is organized indifference.

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.

God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.

Love is being stupid together.

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

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

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.

Sometime I think; and sometime I am.

God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly

Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our emotions.

To enter into your own mind you need to be armed to the teeth.

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.

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.