Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Paul Valery (French Critic, Poet)

Paul Valéry (1871–1945,) fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry, was a French poet, essayist, playwright, critic, and theorist. He was regarded as the greatest French poet of the 20th century.

Born in Sète, Occitanie, Valéry studied law in Montpellier. After moving to Paris in 1892, he became a regular attendant at Stéphane Mallarmé’s literary salons called “Tuesday evenings.” Valéry spent the next 20 years involved with mathematics and philosophical speculations, producing, notably, Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci (1895.)

Valéry returned to the world of poetry in 1915. Influenced by symbolism and Mallarmé, Valéry wrote his masterpiece La jeune Parque (1917, ‘The Young Fate.’) It was followed by Album de versanciens 1890–1900 (1920) and Charmesoupoèmes (1922, ‘Charms,’) containing “Le Cimetièremarin” (“The Graveyard by the Sea.”) Charmesoupoèmes was translated by the poet Cecil Day-Lewis (1946,) by Graham D. Martin (1971,) and into Scots by Douglas Young (1989.)

Valéry later wrote a large number of essays literary, philosophical, and aesthetic subjects, which were collected in Variété (1924–44, ‘Variety.’) he wrote two Socratic dialogues, Eupalinos ou l’Architecte (1923, ‘Eupalinos, or The Architect ‘) and L’Âme et la Danse (1925, ‘Soul and Dance.’) Valéry’s Cahiers (1957–60, ‘Notebooks’) record his thoughts on a wide range of issues.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Paul Valery

There are two ways to aquire the niceties of life:
1) To produce them or
2) To plunder them.
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
Paul Valery

A work of art/a poem is never really finished, it is merely abandoned.
Paul Valery

A man who is “of sound mind” is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
Paul Valery
Topics: Sanity

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
Paul Valery
Topics: Thoughts, Thought, Thinking

The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.
Paul Valery
Topics: Balance

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: Thought

Love is being stupid together.
Paul Valery
Topics: Love

The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds
Paul Valery
Topics: Thoughts

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery
Topics: Poets, Poetry

Every beginning is a consequence. Every beginning ends something.
Paul Valery
Topics: Beginning, Beginnings, Change

Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
Paul Valery
Topics: Disorder

What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
Paul Valery
Topics: Self Respect

Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science.
Paul Valery
Topics: Scientists, Science

Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
Paul Valery
Topics: Scientists, Science

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. nothing in the paper today , we sigh.
Paul Valery
Topics: Anxiety, Worry

Ignorance wavers between extreme audacity and extreme shyness.
Paul Valery

Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
Paul Valery
Topics: Truth

Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
Paul Valery
Topics: Ideas

The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
Paul Valery

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.
Paul Valery
Topics: Work

A businessman is a hybrid between a dancer and a calculator.
Paul Valery
Topics: Business

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul Valery
Topics: Dreams

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
Paul Valery
Topics: Belief

Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
Paul Valery
Topics: Creativity

Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being the helpless prey of impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, and crowning injury inflicts upon him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.
Paul Valery
Topics: Mistakes

Sometimes I think and other times I am.
Paul Valery
Topics: Thinking

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

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
Topics: Knowledge

Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This … is a precious gift.
Paul Valery
Topics: Ignorance

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well
Paul Valery
Topics: Poetry

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