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 ValeryThe best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul ValeryPolitics is the art of preventing people from sticking their noses in things that are properly their business.
Paul ValeryThe trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Paul ValeryA man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
Paul ValerySerious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
Paul ValeryAt times I think and at times I am.
Paul ValeryBooks have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Paul ValeryA painter should not paint what he sees but what should be seen.
Paul ValeryThe universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
Paul ValeryPoliteness is organized indifference.
Paul ValeryHistory is the science of things which are not repeated.
Paul ValeryA great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
Paul ValeryA man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
Paul ValeryLove is being stupid together.
Paul ValeryMan is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.
Paul ValeryThat which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
Paul ValeryGod made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
Paul ValeryPolitics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
Paul ValeryA man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
Paul ValeryA businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
Paul ValeryGod created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
Paul ValeryThe history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.
Paul ValeryPolitics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
Paul ValeryThe folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
Paul Valery
