Quotes from Paul Valery

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

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

Nothing beautiful can be summarized.

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

We need to wake up from a thought that lasts too long.

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

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

We are wont to condemn self-love; but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.

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

All nations have present, or past, or future reasons for thinking themselves incomparable.

The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.

Love is being stupid together.

It would be impossible to love anyone or anything one knew completely. Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object.

Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.

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

Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons it.

Every beginning is a consequence — every beginning ends some thing.

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

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

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.

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.

The future, like everything else, is not what it used to be.