Paul Valery Quotes

• A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which concern them.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

• A poem is never finished; it is always an accident that puts a stop to it, that gives it to the public.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized
• 

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

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Book And Reading, Enemies

• God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in God, Religion

• Politeness is organized indifference.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Politeness

• Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Life

• What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion; what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing

• Poems are never finished – just abandoned.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Poetry

• A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Art

  Tags in Man, Idea, Poetry And Poets

• A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Great Man

• A man’s true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Myself, Man, Secret

• A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Man, Thoughts And Thinking

• At times I think and at times I am.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Myself

• History is the science of things which are not repeated.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in History

  Tags in Science

• Man’s great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Misfortune, Man

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

  Paul Valery

  Topics in God

  Tags in Feel, Feelings

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

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Attitude

  Tags in Judgment

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

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Poetry And Poets, Impossible

• Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.

  Paul Valery

  Topics in Truth

Paul Valery (43)

Birth:	30th October, 1871
Death:	20th July, 1945
Nationality:	French
Profession:	Essayist, Philosopher, Poet

Related Authors

• Jamaica Kincaid
• Irving Babbitt
• Stephen Hunter
• Annie Dillard
• Forrest Gander
• Margaret Laurence
• Christian Bauman
• Queenie Dorothy Leavis
• Linda Hogan
• Walt Whitman

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 21st December

Births

• 1892 - Rebecca West
• 1969 - Julie Delpy
• 1925 - Paul Kurtz
• 1944 - Michael Tilson Thomas
• 1870 - Sir Patrick Duncan

Deaths

• 2001 - David Swift
• 1958 - Lion Feuchtwanger
• 1889 - Joseph Barber Lightfoot
• 1935 - Kurt Tucholsky
• 1992 - Stella Adler