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Paul Valery Biography

Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry (French: [pɔl valeʁi]; 30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 12 different years.

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Paul Valery Quotes

Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by educating themselves, others, unable to so much as conceive of making use of it, let it waste away. Quite on the contrary, we should search for it assiduously in what we think we know best. Leaf through a dictionary or try to make one, and you will find that every word covers and masks a well so bottomless that the questions you toss into it arouse no more than an echo.

Education, Ignorance, Know, Men, Quite, Word

A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.

Accident, Death, Deliver, Needs, Satisfaction, Transformations

My poems mean what people take them to mean.

Mean, People, Poems, Take

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

Armed, Penetrate, Teeth

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

Abandoned, Finished, Inspirational, Life, Poem, Witty

We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.

Appreciation, Differences, Enriched, Reciprocate

In most cases, when the lion, weary of obeying its master, has torn and devoured him, its nerves are pacified and it looks round for another master before whom to grovel.

Grovel, Lions, Looks, Master, Nerves, Torn

We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.

Civilization, Civilizations, Know, Knows, Mortal, Mortals

What Degas called 'a way of seeing' must consequently bear a wide enough interpretation to include way of being, power, knowledge, and will.

Bears, Degas, Include, Way, Wide

If the state is strong, it crushes us. If it is weak, we perish.

Crush, Crushes, Strong, Weak

Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.

Beautiful, Doe, Infernal, Meet, Nothing, Writing

An intelligent woman is a woman with whom one can be as stupid as one wants.

Intelligent, Stupid, Want, Woman

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!

Desert, Grace, Heart, Islands, Sign, Whole

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

Truth, Years, Long, Become, Truths

If disorder is the rule with you, you will be penalized for installing order.

Order, Disorder, Human Condition, Penalized, Installing, Rule

One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall.

Fall, Moon, Newton, Notice, Science

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

Expects, Man, Men, Mind, Miracle

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

Betrayal, Fidelity, Kind, Translation

Sometimes I think and other times I am.

Sometimes, Think, Thinking, Thoughts And Thinking, Times

If what has happened in the one person were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the effects of art would disappear.

Art, Communicated, Disappear, Person, Poetry

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