Paul Valéry Quotes
Best 21 Quotes by Paul Valéry
“A difficulty is a light. An insurmountable difficulty is a sun.”
“A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.”
“An attitude of permanent indignation signifies great mental poverty. Politics compels it votaries to take that line and you can see their minds growing more impoverished every day, from one burst of righteous indignation to the next.”
“An intelligent woman is a woman with whom one can be as stupid as one wants.”
“Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.”
“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.”
“History is the most dangerous product which the chemistry of the mind has concocted. Its properties are well known. It produces dreams and drunkenness. It fills people with false memories, exaggerates their reactions, exacerbates old grievances, torments them in their repose, and encourages either a delirium of grandeur or a delusion of persecution. It makes whole nations bitter, arrogant, insufferable and vainglorious.”
“Let us enrich ourselves with our mutual differences.”
“Nothing beautiful can be summarized.”
“Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our emotions.”
“Politeness is organized indifference.”
“Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.”
“Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.”
“Sometimes I think, sometimes I am.”
“The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.”
“The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.”
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“Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.”
“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.”
“To enter into your own mind you need to be armed to the teeth.”
“To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.”
“War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.”
“We hope vaguely but dread precisely.”
