Paul Valery Quotes

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

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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