There are two ways to aquire the niceties of life: 1) To produce them or 2) To plunder them. When plunder becomes… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
The mind has transformed the world, and the world is repaying it with interest. It has led man where he had no… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This is a precious gift. — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
The "determinist" swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
Man cannot bear his own portrait. The image of his limits and his own determinacy exasperates him, drives him mad. — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
The very object of an art, the principle of its artifice, is precisely to impart the impression of an ideal state in… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery. — 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
Great things are accomplished by men who are not conscious of the impotence of man. Such insensitiveness is precious. But we must… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events. — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
Collect all the facts that can be collected about the life of Racine and you will never learn from them the art… — Paul Valery Copy Share Image
The dog has made man their God, if the dog was an atheist, it would be perfect. — 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
