Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Balance
Endures
Value
Extremist
Values
Moderates
Give
Moderation
Giving
Stability
Great
Acquire
Make
Extremes
Acquires
World
Endure
Extremists

More quotes by Paul Valery

Image
Science is a collection of successful recipes.
Paul Valery
Image
The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
Paul Valery
Image
Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.
Paul Valery
Image
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery
Image
History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.
Paul Valery
Image
What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.
Paul Valery
Image
Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.
Paul Valery
Image
The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
Paul Valery
Image
The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.
Paul Valery
Image
Thanks to photography, the eye grew accustomed to anticipate what it should see and to see it and it learned not to see nonexistent things which, hitherto, it had seen so clearly.
Paul Valery
Image
The dog has made man their God, if the dog was an atheist, it would be perfect.
Paul Valery
Image
That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
Paul Valery
Image
What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
Paul Valery
Image
A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
Paul Valery
Image
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
Image
Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.
Paul Valery
Image
God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
Paul Valery
Image
If what has happened in the one person were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the effects of art would disappear.
Paul Valery
Image
It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
Paul Valery
Image
History is the science of what never happens twice.
Paul Valery