Quote

Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.

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
Remove
Immediately
Skin
Skins
Surface
Come
Men
Dissect
Machinery

More quotes by Paul Valery

Image
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
Image
Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.
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
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
Image
Poems are never finished - just abandoned
Paul Valery
Image
Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.
Paul Valery
Image
There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
Paul Valery
Image
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul Valery
Image
We hope vaguely but dread precisely.
Paul Valery
Image
In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
Paul Valery
Image
A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.
Paul Valery
Image
That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
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
The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
Paul Valery
Image
The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, ... since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted.There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.
Paul Valery
Image
A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
Paul Valery
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary - and not only necessary but urgent - to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate.
Paul Valery
Image
The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
Paul Valery