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Poems are never finished - just abandoned
Paul Valery
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Paul Valery
Age: 73 †
Born: 1871
Born: October 30
Died: 1945
Died: July 20
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Poet
Professor
Writer
Cette
Paul Ambroise Valéry
Paul Ambroise Valery
Paul-Ambroise Valéry
Paul Valery
Paul-Ambroise Valery
Abandoned
Poems
Finished
Never
More quotes by Paul Valery
In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quantity of anything without changing its quality. Similar figures exist only in pure geometry.
Paul Valery
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery
There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
Paul Valery
Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.
Paul Valery
In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
Paul Valery
What is simple is false and what is not is useless.
Paul Valery
Growing nations should remember that, in nature, no tree, though placed in the best conditions of light, soil, and plot, can continue to grow and spread indefinitely.
Paul Valery
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
A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.
Paul Valery
A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.
Paul Valery
Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest.
Paul Valery
Collect all the facts that can be collected about the life of Racine and you will never learn from them the art of his verse. All criticism is dominated by the outworn theory that the man is the cause of the work as in the eyes of the law the criminal is the cause of the crime. Far rather are they both the effects.
Paul Valery
The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
Paul Valery
A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
Paul Valery
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.
Paul Valery
The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.
Paul Valery
Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.
Paul Valery
What golden hour of life, what glittering moment will ever equal the pain its loss can cause?
Paul Valery
The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
Paul Valery
We hope vaguely but dread precisely.
Paul Valery
