Paul Valery

In the eyes of those lovers of perfection, a work is never finished a word that for them has no sense but…

— Paul Valery

“O Socrates, the universe cannot for one instant endure to be only what it is. It is strange to think that that…

— Paul Valéry

We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.

— Paul Valery

It seems to me that the soul, when alone with itself and speaking to itself, uses only a small number of words,…

— Paul Valery

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

— Paul Valery

“I am now going to make an admission. I confess, I agree, that all these good people who protested, who laughed, who…

— Paul Valery

“Degas is one of the very few painters who have given the floor its true importance.”

— Paul Valéry

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

— Paul Valery

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

— Paul Valery

The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never…

— Paul Valery

The folly of mistaking oneself for an oracle is built right into us.

— Paul Valery

Thought must be hidden in the verse like nutritional virtue in a fruit.

— Paul Valery

To be sincere means to be the same person when one is with oneself; that is to say, alone - but that…

— Paul Valery

No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.

— Paul Valery

Interruption, incoherence, surprise are the ordinary conditions of our life. They have even become real needs for many people, whose minds are…

— Paul Valery

Whatever we succeed in doing is a transformation of something we have failed to do. Thus, when we fail, it is only…

— Paul Valery

“Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power…

— Paul Valéry

What golden hour of life, what glittering moment will ever equal the pain its loss can cause?

— Paul Valery

To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.

— Paul Valery

History is the science of what never happens twice.

— Paul Valery

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

— Paul Valery

Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.

— Paul Valery

“At the end of the mind, the body. But at the end of the body, the mind.”

— Paul Valery

What is simple is false and what is not is useless.

— Paul Valery

We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.

— Paul Valery