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Paul Valéry

65 quotes

“A difficulty is a light, but an insurmountable difficulty can be the very sun in what it reveals to us... [Une difficulté est une lumière. Une difficulté insurmontable est un soleil.]”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by A. C. Grayling, "Wittgenstein's Games by A. C. Grayling" (Feb 16, 2020) , A Youtube video source from the Darwin College Lecture Series channel, 6:01. Note: Gemini advises that Paul Valéry expressed this se…
“Le mal de prendre une hypallage pour une découverte, une métaphore pour une démonstration, un vomissement de mots pour un torrent de connaissances capitales, et soi-même pour un oracle, ce mal naît avec nous.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Collect all the facts that can be collected about the life of Racine and you will never learn from them the art of his verse. All criticism is dominated by the outworn theory that the man is the cause of the work as in the eyes of the law the criminal is the cause of the crime. Far rather are they both the effects.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of "truth" and the language of "creation.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An intelligent woman is a woman with whom one can be as stupid as one wants.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything simple is false. Everything complex is unusable.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The very object of art, the principle of its artifice, is precisely to impart the impression of an ideal state in which the man who reaches it will be capable of spontaneously producing, with no effort or hesitation, a magnificent and wonderfully ordered expression of his nature and our destinies.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks on Poetry in The Art of Poetry (1958)
“La bêtise n’est pas mon fort. J’ai vu beaucoup d’individus ; j’ai visité quelques nations ; j’ai pris ma part d’entreprises diverses sans les aimer ; j’ai mangé presque tous les jours ; j’ai touché à des femmes. Je revois maintenant quelques centaines de visages, deux ou trois grands spectacles, et peut-être la substance de vingt livres. Je n’ai pas retenu le meilleur ni le pire de ces choses : est resté ce qui l’a pu.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My soul is nothing now but the dream dreamt by matter struggling with itself!”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But what, Phaedrus, is the contrary of a dream if not some other dream?… A dream of vigilance and tension dreamt by Reason herself!—And what would such a Reason dream?—If a Reason were to dream—a Reason hard, erect, eyes armed, mouth closed, as though mistress of her lips—would not the dream she dreamt be what we see now—this world of exact forces and studied illusions?—A dream, a dream, but a dream interpenetrated with symmetries, all order, acts and sequences!”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have experienced nothing that was not both lawful and obscure, and thus conforming perfectly to the human machine. Are we not organized fantasy? And is not our living system functioning incoherency, disorder in action? Do not events, desires, ideas interchange within us in the most necessary and incomprehensible ways?”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reason, sometimes, seems to me to be the faculty our soul possesses of understanding nothing about our body!”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he soul of love is the invincible difference of lovers, while its subtle matter is the identity of their desires.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What are mortals for?—Their business is to know. Know? And what is to know?—It is assuredly: not to be what one is.—And so here are humans raving and thinking, introducing into nature the principle of unlimited error, and myriads of marvels!”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I cannot think that there exists more than one Sovereign Good.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To construct oneself, to know oneself—are these two distinct acts or not?”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is most beautiful is of necessity tyrannical.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is there more mysterious than clarity?… What more capricious than the way in which light and shade are distributed over hours and over men?”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man can act only because he can ignore.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And do not humans strive in a thousand ways to fill or to break the eternal silence of those infinite spaces that affright them?”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man discerns three great things in the All: he finds there his body, he finds there his soul—and then there is the rest of the world. Between these things there is an unceasing commerce, and sometimes even a confusion arises; but always after a certain time has elapsed, these three things come to be clearly distinguished from one another.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nay, who knows, Phaedrus, if the efforts of humans in their search for God, the observances, the prayers they essay, their obstinate will to discover the most efficacious… who knows if mortals will not finally discover a certitude—or an incertitude—stable and in exact conformity with their nature, if not with the very nature of God?”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatest liberty is born of the greatest rigor.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most people in reasoning, dear Phaedrus, use notions that not only are "ready-made," but have actually been made by nobody. No one is responsible for them, and so they serve everyone badly.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man's deepest glances are those that go out to the void. They converge beyond the All.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, of all acts the most complete is that of constructing. A work demands love, meditation, obedience to your finest thought, the invention of laws by your soul, and many other things that it draws miraculously from your own self, which did not suspect that it possessed them. This work proceeds from the most intimate center of your existence, and yet it is distinct from yourself.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes, Entre les pins palpite, entre les tombes; Midi le juste y compose de feux La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée O récompense après une pensée Qu'un long regard sur le calme des dieux!”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Quel pur travail de fins éclairs consume Maint diamant d'imperceptible écume, Et quelle paix semble se concevoir! Quand sur l'abîme un soleil se repose, Ouvrages purs d'une éternelle cause, Le temps scintille et le songe est savoir.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beau ciel, vrai ciel, regarde-moi qui change! Après tant d'orgueil, après tant d'étrange Oisiveté, mais pleine de pouvoir, Je m'abandonne à ce brillant espace, Sur les maisons des morts mon ombre passe Qui m'apprivoise à son frêle mouvoir.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ici venu, l'avenir est paresse. L'insecte net gratte la sécheresse; Tout est brûlé, défait, reçu dans l'air A je ne sais quelle sévère essence . . . La vie est vaste, étant ivre d'absence, Et l'amertume est douce, et l'esprit clair.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Allez! Tout fuit! Ma présence est poreuse, La sainte impatience meurt aussi!”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre! L'air immense ouvre et referme mon livre, La vague en poudre ose jaillir des rocs! Envolez-vous, pages tout éblouies! Rompez, vagues! Rompez d'eaux rejouies Ce toit tranquille où picoraient des focs!”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The “determinist” swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression “know everything” means nothing.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to … emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Great things are accomplished by men who are not conscious of the impotence of man. Such insensitiveness is precious. But we must admit that criminals are not unlike our heroes in this respect.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary—and not only necessary but urgent—to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a value called “mind” as there is a value oil, wheat, or gold. … One can invest in that value, one can “follow” it as they say on the stock exchange; one can watch its fluctuations in I know not what price list which is the world’s general opinion of it. … All these rising and falling values constitute the great market of human affairs. And of these the unfortunate value mind does not stop falling.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, … since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted. There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God created man, and finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a female companion so that he might feel his solitude more acutely.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Politeness is organized indifference.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.”
Paul Valéry (1871–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source