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
abandoned finished
Poems are never finished - just abandoned
attitude reality judging
Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.
strong stupidity suits
Stupidity is not my strong suit.
eye reflection irritation
In the eyes of those lovers of perfection, a work is never finished a word that for them has no sense but abandoned; and this abandonment, whether to the flames or to the public (and which is the result of weariness or an obligation to deliver) is a kind of an accident to them, like the breaking off of a reflection, which fatigue, irritation, or something similar has made worthless.
mean law affection
It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
photography eye thanks
Thanks to photography, the eye grew accustomed to anticipate what it should see and to see it; and it learned not to see nonexistent things which, hitherto, it had seen so clearly.
art poetry harmony
The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
stupid love-is together
Love is acting stupid together.
numbers soul use
It seems to me that the soul, when alone with itself and speaking to itself, uses only a small number of words, none of them extraordinary.
avant-garde things-change
Everything changes but the avant-garde.
used used-to-be
The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.
real people boredom
Interruption, incoherence, surprise are the ordinary conditions of our life. They have even become real needs for many people, whose minds are no longer fed by anything but sudden changes and constantly renewed stimuli. We can no longer bear anything that lasts. We no longer know how to make boredom bear fruit. So the whole question comes down to this: can the human mind master what the human mind has made?
attitude justice judging
The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never to suspect that our judgments judge us, and that nothing exposes our weaknesses and reveals ourselves more naively than the attitude of pronouncing upon our neighbors.
advice traps bounds
Beware of what you do best; its bound to be a trap.