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
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
Every beginning is a consequence. Every beginning ends something.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Beginning, Change
The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
—Paul Valery
Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Ideas
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
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
Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Science
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
It would be impossible to “love” anyone or anything one knew completely. Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Love
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Poets, Poetry
The mind has transformed the world, and the world is repaying it with interest. It has led man where he had no idea how to go.
—Paul Valery
Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Attitude, Justice
Love is being stupid together.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Love
Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Disorder
In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well
—Paul Valery
Topics: Poetry
A businessman is a hybrid between a dancer and a calculator.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Business
Sometimes I think and other times I am.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Thinking
A work of art/a poem is never really finished, it is merely abandoned.
—Paul Valery
To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Photography, One liners
Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This … is a precious gift.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Ignorance
A man who is “of sound mind” is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
—Paul Valery
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
History is the science of what never happens twice.
—Paul Valery
Topics: History
A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
—Paul Valery
Topics: Thought, Thoughts, Thinking