Paul Valery Quotes

"God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through."

"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be."

"If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. nothing in the paper today , we sigh."

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

"Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content."

"History is the science of things which are not repeated."

"In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well"

"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."

"A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations."

"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up."

"Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken."

"An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it."

"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us."