Paul Valéry Quotes

This quiet roof, where dove-sails saunter by, Between the pines, the tombs, throbs visibly. Impartial noon patterns the sea in flame — That sea forever starting and re-starting. When thought has had its hour, oh how rewarding Are the long vistas of celestial calm!

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

La bêtise n’est pas mon fort. J’ai vu beaucoup d’individus ; j’ai visité quelques nations ; j’ai pris ma part d’entreprises diverses sans les aimer ; j’ai mangé presque tous les jours ; j’ai touché à des femmes. Je revois maintenant quelques centaines de visages, deux ou trois grands spectacles, et peut-être la substance de vingt livres. Je n’ai pas retenu le meilleur ni le pire de ces choses : est resté ce qui l’a pu.

[T]he soul of love is the invincible difference of lovers, while its subtle matter is the identity of their desires.

The being filled with wonder is lovely, like a flower.

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

What are mortals for?—Their business is to know. Know? And what is to know?—It is assuredly: not to be what one is.—And so here are humans raving and thinking, introducing into nature the principle of unlimited error, and myriads of marvels!

Pascal himself did not fail to make a mistake, who treated this art superbly, and reduced it to the vanity of laboriously pursuing the resemblance of things whose sight of themselves is of no interest, which proves that he did not know how to look, that is to say, how to forget the names of the things we see.

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

to live means to lack something at every moment

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

Collect all the facts that can be collected about the life of Racine and you will never learn from them the art of his verse. All criticism is dominated by the outworn theory that the man is the cause of the work as in the eyes of the law the criminal is the cause of the crime. Far rather are they both the effects.

Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our emotions.

But still less should the gold of rich men lazily sleep its heavy sleep in the urns and gloom of treasuries. This so weighty metal, when it becomes the associate of a fancy, assumes the most active virtues of the mind. It has her restless nature. Its essence is to vanish. It changes into all things, without being itself changed. It raises blocks of stone, pierces mountains, diverts rivers, opens the gates of fortresses and the most secret hearts; it enchains men; it dresses, it undresses women with an almost miraculous promptitude. It is truly the most abstract agent that exists, next to thought. But thought exchanges and envelops images only, whereas gold incites and promotes the transmutations of all real things into one another; itself remaining incorruptible, and passing untainted through all hands.

Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business.