Quotes from Paul Valery

What a pity to see a mind as great as Napoleon's devoted to trivial things such as empires, historic events, the thundering of cannons and of men; he believed in glory, in posterity, in Caesar; nations in turmoil and other trifles absorbed all his attention ... How could he fail to see that what really mattered was something else entirely?

Patience, patience. Patience dans l'azur chaque atome de silence est la chance d'un fruit mûr !

Car j'ai vécu de vous attendre, Et mon coeur n'était que vos pas.

I have made a similar suggestion for poetry: that one should approach it as pure sonority, reading and rereading it as a sort of music, and should not introduce meanings or intentions into the diction before clearly grasping the system of sounds that every poem must offer on pain of nonexistence.

I think of the presence and of the habits of mortals in this so fluid stream, and reflect that I was among them, striving to see all things just as I see them at this very moment. I then placed Wisdom in the eternal station which now is ours. But from here all is unrecognizable. Truth is before us, and we no longer understand anything at all.

How can one not feel enthusiasm for the man who never said anything vague?

Dieu a tout fait de rien. Mais le rien perce.

But hope is only man's mistrust of the clear foresight of his mind.

What is more important than the meal? Doesn't the least observant man-about-town look upon the implementation and ritual progress of a meal as a liturgical prescription? Isn't all of civilization apparent in these careful preparations, which consecrate the spirit's triumph over a raging appetite?

This, dear Phaedrus, is the most important point: no geometry without the word. Without it, figures are accidents, and neither make manifest nor serve the power of the mind.

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!...

I am not averse to generalizing the notion of "modern" to designate a certain way of life, rather than making it purely a synonym of 'contemporary'. There are moments and places in history to which 'we moderns' could return without too greatly disturbing the harmony of those times, without seeming objects infinitely curious and conspicuous... creatures shocking, dissonant, and unassailable.

By giving the name of progress to its own tendency to a fatal precision, the world is seeking to add to the benefits of life the advantages of death.

Science is a collection of successful recipes.

Life blackens at the contact of truth.

You have made yourself an island of time, you are a time that has become detached from that vast Time in which your indefinite duration has the subsistence and eternity of a smoke-ring.

Lo más profundo del hombre es la piel.

It is only by chance that we are reminded of the permanent circumstances of our life.

O thoughtful waste of my days! What an artist I have destroyed!

Ce qui n'est pas ineffable n'a aucune importance.

O Socrates, the universe cannot for one instant endure to be only what it is. It is strange to think that that which is All cannot be sufficient unto itself!

I would hear the song of the columns and visualize in the pure sky the monument of a melody.

Skilled verse is the work of a profound skeptic.

Every ironist has in mind a pretentious reader, mirror of himself.