A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and affections… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
History justifies whatever we want it to. It teaches absolutely nothing, for it contains everything and gives examples of everything. — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
Photography invites one to give up any attempt to delineate such things as can delineate themselves. — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
In the eyes of those lovers of perfection, a work is never finished a word that for them has no sense but abandoned; and… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
“O Socrates, the universe cannot for one instant endure to be only what it is. It is strange to think that that which is… — Paul Valéry Copy Share Image
It seems to me that the soul, when alone with itself and speaking to itself, uses only a small number of words, none of… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
“I am now going to make an admission. I confess, I agree, that all these good people who protested, who laughed, who did not… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
“Degas is one of the very few painters who have given the floor its true importance.” — Paul Valéry Copy Share Image
Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business. — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly. — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never to suspect… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
Thought must be hidden in the verse like nutritional virtue in a fruit. — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
