Paul Valery quotes

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
-- Paul Valery

#Dream #Positive Thinking #Way

His heart is a desert island.... The whole scope, the whole energy of his mind surround and protect him; his depths isolate him and guard him against the truth. He flatters himself that he is entirely alone there.... Patience, dear lady. Perhaps, one day, he will discover some footprint on the sand.... What holy and happy terror, what salutary fright, once he recognizes in that pure sign of grace that his island is mysteriously inhabited!...
-- Paul Valery

#Heart #Islands #Grace

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
-- Paul Valery

#Book #Animal #Weather

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

#Time #Future #Trouble

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

#Thinking #Men #Complicated

Peace is a virtual, mute, sustained victory of potential powers against probable greeds
-- Paul Valery

#Peace #Greed #Victory

The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
-- Paul Valery

#Science #Profound #Structure

At times I think and at times I am.
-- Paul Valery

#Time #Thinking

That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
-- Paul Valery

#Psychics #Ironic #Empowerment

An intelligent woman is a woman with whom one can be as stupid as one wants.
-- Paul Valery

#Stupid #Intelligent #Want

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

#Photography #Names #Vision

History is the most dangerous product which the chemistry of the mind has concocted. Its properties are well known. It produces dreams and drunkenness. It fills people with false memories, exaggerates their reactions, exacerbates old grievances, torments them in their repose, and encourages either a delirium of grandeur or a delusion of persecution. It makes whole nations bitter, arrogant, insufferable and vainglorious.
-- Paul Valery

#Dream #Memories #People

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

#Ideas #People #Serious

Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
-- Paul Valery

#Betrayal #Kind #Fidelity

I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.
-- Paul Valery

#Order #History #Study

The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
-- Paul Valery

#Ideas #Giving #Psychology

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

#Art #Business #People

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
-- Paul Valery

#Art #Artist #Artistic

Love is being stupid together.
-- Paul Valery

#Love #Romantic #Valentines Day

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
-- Paul Valery

#Spiritual #Loneliness #Drinking

One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.
-- Paul Valery

#Light #Bird #Should

Let us enrich ourselves with our mutual differences.
-- Paul Valery

#Inspirational #Differences #Mutual

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

#Art #Poetry #Fruit

A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
-- Paul Valery

#Art #Poetry

Every beginning is a consequence - every beginning ends some thing.
-- Paul Valery

#Positive #Ends #Consequence

The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
-- Paul Valery

#Art #Poetry #Harmony

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.
-- Paul Valery

#Art #Ideas #Poetry

An attitude of permanent indignation signifies great mental poverty. Politics compels it votaries to take that line and you can see their minds growing more impoverished every day, from one burst of righteous indignation to the next.
-- Paul Valery

#Attitude #Mind #Lines