Paul Valery Quotes

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

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

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

Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.

That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.

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.

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