Paul Valery Quotes - Page 5

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• The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices

  Paul Valery

  People, Evil, Insulting

  7 Copy quote

• Peace is a virtual, mute, sustained victory of potential powers against probable greeds

  Paul Valery

  Peace, Greed, Humanity

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• Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest.

  Paul Valery

  Spiritual, Art, Ideas

  "Reflections on the World Today" by Paul Valery, (pp. 167-168), 1931.

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• The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.

  Paul Valery

  Science, Profound, Structure

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• The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never to suspect that our judgments judge us, and that nothing exposes our weaknesses and reveals ourselves more naively than the attitude of pronouncing upon our neighbors.

  Paul Valery

  Attitude, Justice, Judging

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• Though completely armed with knowledge and endowed with power, we are blind and impotent in a world we have equipped and organized-a world of which we now fear the inextricable complexity.

  Paul Valery

  Knowledge, World, Blind

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• Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.

  Paul Valery

  Betrayal, Kind, Fidelity

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• Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.

  Paul Valery

  Mistake, Believe, Errors

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• At times I think and at times I am.

  Paul Valery

  Time, Memories, Thinking

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• A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.

  Paul Valery

  Giving, Mind, Firsts

  "Reflections on the World Today" by Paul Valery, (p. 55), 1931.

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• The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.

  Paul Valery

  Wind, Rising

  "Charmes ou poèmes". Book by Paul Valery, 1922.

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• A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.

  Paul Valery

  Reality, Dancer, Hybridity

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

  Paul Valery

  Men, Miracle, Mind

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• Growing nations should remember that, in nature, no tree, though placed in the best conditions of light, soil, and plot, can continue to grow and spread indefinitely.

  Paul Valery

  Light, Tree, Plot

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• We must always apologize for talking painting.

  Paul Valery

  Expression, Talking, Apologizing

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• Order always weighs on the individual. Disorder makes him wish for the police or for death. These are two extreme circumstances in which human nature is not at ease.

  Paul Valery

  Order, Two, Police

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• It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary - and not only necessary but urgent - to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate.

  Paul Valery

  Fate, Mind, These Days

  "Reflections on the World Today" by Paul Valery, (p. 156), 1931.

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• History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.

  Paul Valery

  History, Example, Chemistry

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• The 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

  Truth, Honesty, Spring

  "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci". Book by Paul Valery, 1895.

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• Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.

  Paul Valery

  Simple, Hands, Water

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• To penetrate one's being, one must go armed to the teeth.

  Paul Valery

  Teeth, Penetrate

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• Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

  Paul Valery

  Mean, Successful, Science

  'Moralitès' (1932) p. 41

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• In the eyes of those lovers of perfection, a work is never finished - a word that for them has no sense - but abandoned; and this abandonment, whether to the flames or to the public (and which is the result of weariness or an obligation to deliver) is a kind of an accident to them, like the breaking off of a reflection, which fatigue, irritation, or something similar has made worthless.

  Paul Valery

  Eye, Reflection, Irritation

  "Collected Works", vol. 1,("Recollection"), 1972.

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• To write regular verses destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities, but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and totally unexpected thoughts.

  Paul Valery

  Writing, Numbers, Unexpected

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

  Paul Valery

  Impossible, Said, Wells

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