Paul Valery Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.

  Paul Valery

  Reality, Men, Keeping Secrets

  22 Copy quote

• The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.

  Paul Valery

  Giving, Balance, World

  16 Copy quote

• Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.

  Paul Valery

  Men, Ideas, Doing Nothing

  14 Copy quote

• A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.

  Paul Valery

  Being Yourself, Being Single, Men

  37 Copy quote

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

  Paul Valery

  Love, Relationship, Distance

  18 Copy quote

• [Beauty is] that which makes us despair.

  Paul Valery

  Despair

  18 Copy quote

• One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.

  Paul Valery

  Light, Bird, Should

  7 Copy quote

• 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 Valery

  Men, Equality, People

  Regards sur le Monde Actuel (1931)

  6 Copy quote

• The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.

  Paul Valery

  Advantage, Freshness, Loses

  23 Copy quote

• Every social system is more or less against nature, and at every moment nature is at work to reclaim her rights.

  Paul Valery

  Rights, Society, Moments

  12 Copy quote

• Sometimes I think, sometimes I am .

  Paul Valery

  Thinking, Sometimes

  42 Copy quote

• Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.

  Paul Valery

  Ideas, People, Serious

  40 Copy quote

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

  Paul Valery

  Book, Animal, Fire

  90 Copy quote

• A difficulty is a light. An insurmountable difficulty is a sun.

  Paul Valery

  Light, Mindfulness, Sun

  40 Copy quote

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

  Paul Valery

  Loss, Men, Lost Friendship

  57 Copy quote

• What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.

  Paul Valery

  Simple, Complicated, Understood

  16 Copy quote

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

  Paul Valery

  Women, Loneliness, Solitude

  Tel Quel 1 "Moralites" (1941)

  21 Copy quote

• 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 Valery

  Writing, Vocabulary, Mind

  8 Copy quote

• If the Ego is hateful, Love your neighbor as yourself becomes a cruel irony.

  Paul Valery

  Love You, Ego, Hateful

  27 Copy quote

• My poems mean what people take them to mean.

  Paul Valery

  Mean, People

  9 Copy quote

• We need to wake up from a thought that lasts too long.

  Paul Valery

  Courage, Long, Needs

  6 Copy quote

• An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.

  Paul Valery

  Art, Abandon, Artist

  21 Copy quote

• A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

  Paul Valery

  Inspirational, Life, Witty

  67 Copy quote

• 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

  Beautiful, Writing, Doe

  27 Copy quote

• Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.

  Paul Valery

  Dance, Journey, Hiking

  Talk on BBC Radio, January 13, 1976.

  12 Copy quote

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