Paul Valery
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry (30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was a French author and Symbolist poet. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath. In addition to his fiction (poetry, drama, and dialogues), he also wrote many essays and aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events.
Found 19 thoughts of Paul Valery
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 in the love with which we are loved eternally. He who is able to love himself is able to love others also; he who has learned to overcome self-contempt has overcome his contempt for others.
Paul Valery
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul Valery
Politics is the art of preventing people from sticking their noses in things that are properly their business.
Paul Valery
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Paul Valery
A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
Paul Valery
Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
Paul Valery
Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Paul Valery
A painter should not paint what he sees but what should be seen.
Paul Valery
The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
Paul Valery
History is the science of things which are not repeated.
Paul Valery
A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
Paul Valery
A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
Paul Valery
Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.
Paul Valery
That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
Paul Valery
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
Paul Valery
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
Paul Valery
