Quote

We hope vaguely but dread precisely.

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
Vaguely
Dread
Precisely
Hope

More quotes by Paul Valery

Image
What golden hour of life, what glittering moment will ever equal the pain its loss can cause?
Paul Valery
Image
We are wont to condemn self-love but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.
Paul Valery
Image
Stupidity is not my strong suit.
Paul Valery
Image
Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
Paul Valery
Image
Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
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
History is the science of what never happens twice.
Paul Valery
Image
Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.
Paul Valery
Image
An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
Paul Valery
Image
Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
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
A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
Paul Valery
Image
A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
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
[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.
Paul Valery
Image
The mind has transformed the world, and the world is repaying it with interest. It has led man where he had no idea how to go.
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
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
In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
Paul Valery
Image
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