Paul Valery Quotes - Page 4

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• The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.

  Paul Valery

  Ideas, Giving, Psychology

  "Tel Quel". Book by Paul Valery, 1943.

  26 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Valery

  Art, Destiny, Men

  "The Art of Poetry". Book by Paul Valery, 1958.

  13 Copy quote

• 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."

  Paul Valery

  Idols, Essence, Principles

  "Littérature". Book by Paul Valery, 1930.

  6 Copy quote

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

  Paul Valery

  Fall, Science, Moon

  8 Copy quote

• A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

  Paul Valery

  Men, Thinking, Complicated

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Valery

  Art, Poetry, Disappear

  11 Copy quote

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

  Paul Valery

  Men, Skins, Surface

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Valery

  Giving, Effort, Everyday

  10 Copy quote

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

  Paul Valery

  Math, Quality, World

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Death, Satisfaction, Needs

  "Collected Works", vol. 1, translated by David Paul, 1972.

  5 Copy quote

• We are wont to condemn self-love; but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.

  Paul Valery

  Hate, Mean, Self

  18 Copy quote

• To hit someone means to adopt his point of view.

  Paul Valery

  Mean, Views, Point Of View

  14 Copy quote

• Conscience reigns but it does not govern.

  Paul Valery

  Doe, Reign, Conscience

  8 Copy quote

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

  Paul Valery

  Atheism, Chance, Belief

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Valery

  Art, Men, Ideas

  8 Copy quote

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

  Paul Valery

  Past, Thinking, Reason

  19 Copy quote

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

  Paul Valery

  People, Evil, Insulting

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Valery

  Love, Heart, Self

  16 Copy quote

• Though completely armed with knowledge and endowed with power, we are blind and impotent in a world we have equipped and organized-a world of which we now fear the inextricable complexity.

  Paul Valery

  Knowledge, World, Blind

  6 Copy quote

• The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never to suspect that our judgments judge us, and that nothing exposes our weaknesses and reveals ourselves more naively than the attitude of pronouncing upon our neighbors.

  Paul Valery

  Attitude, Justice, Judging

  7 Copy quote

• The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.

  Paul Valery

  Science, Profound, Structure

  56 Copy quote

• Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.

  Paul Valery

  Betrayal, Kind, Fidelity

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Paul Valery

  Mistake, Believe, Errors

  8 Copy quote

• If disorder is the rule with you, you will be penalized for installing order.

  Paul Valery

  Order, Disorder, Human Condition

  9 Copy quote

• At times I think and at times I am.

  Paul Valery

  Time, Memories, Thinking

  11 Copy quote

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