Quotes from Paul Valery

Politics is the art of preventing people from minding their own business.

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."

Sometimes I think and other times I am.

Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.

The sea, the ever renewing sea!

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

Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being the helpless prey of impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, and crowning injury inflicts upon him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.

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.

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

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 réjouies Ce toit tranquille où picoraient des focs!

Politeness is organized indifference.

God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.

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

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

Sometime I think; and sometime I am.

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

The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!

Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being helpless prey to impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, drops him, promises and betrays, and -crowning injury- inflicts on him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.

to live means to lack something at every moment

Those who cannot attack the thought, instead attack the thinker.

You are in love with intelligence, until it frightens you. For your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.

Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.

Interruption, incoherence, surprise are the ordinary conditions of our life. They have even become real needs for many people, whose minds are no longer fed by anything but sudden changes and constantly renewed stimuli. We can no longer bear anything that lasts. We no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit. So the whole question comes down to this: can the human mind master what the human mind has made?

The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.