Paul Valery

French poet

Lived from: 1871-1945

Category: Poets (Contemporary)

Quotes: Paul Valery

Quotes 1 till 12 of 12.

Paul Valery

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A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
Paul Valery

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A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery

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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

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If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. nothing in the paper today , we sigh.
Paul Valery

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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
Paul Valery

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

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Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science.
Paul Valery

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Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
Paul Valery

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

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

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The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
Paul Valery

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The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.