Quotes by Paul Valery

...in song the words tend to lose their significance, do often lose it, while at the other extreme, in current prose it is the musical value that tends to disappear - so that verse stands symmetrically, as it were, between song, on the one hand, and prose on the other - and is thus admirably and delicately balanced between the sensual and the intellectual power of language. (Paul Valery)

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts. (Paul Valery)

A man who is of sound mind is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key. (Paul Valery)

A painter should not paint what he sees but what should be seen. (Paul Valery)

A poem is never finished, only abandoned. (Paul Valery)

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

God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly. (Paul Valery)

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. (Paul Valery)

History is the science of things which are not repeated. (Paul Valery)

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well. (Paul Valery)