Paul Valery
Paul Valery
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valérywas a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction, his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 12 different years...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 October 1871
CountryFrance
block men want
Man's great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to.
mean moments
to live means to lack something at every moment
failure succeed transformation
Whatever we succeed in doing is a transformation of something we have failed to do. Thus, when we fail, it is only because we have given up.
successful recipes collections
Science is a collection of successful recipes.
rights society moments
Every social system is more or less against nature, and at every moment nature is at work to reclaim her rights.
happens
History is the science of what never happens twice.
mistake believe errors
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.
education ignorance men
Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by educating themselves, others, unable to so much as conceive of making use of it, let it waste away. Quite on the contrary, we should search for it assiduously in what we think we know best. Leaf through a dictionary or try to make one, and you will find that every word covers and masks a well so bottomless that the questions you toss into it arouse no more than an echo.
positive beginnings-and-ends things-change
Every beginning is a consequence - every beginning ends some thing.
inspirational life witty
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
differences reciprocate
We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.
ideas giving psychology
The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
mean sincerity sincere
To be sincere means to be the same person when one is with oneself; that is to say, alone - but that is all it means.
teeth penetrate
To penetrate one's being, one must go armed to the teeth.