It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another. — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
“You are in love with intelligence, until it frightens you. For your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts… — Paul Valéry Copy Share Image
It would be impossible to "love" anyone or anything one knew completely. Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object. — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
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
Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was… — 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
