Paul Valery

That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.

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.

The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.

The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.

It would be impossible to "love" anyone or anything one knew completely. Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object.

You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it in everyday language, and which does not give rise to any difficulty when it is engaged in the rapid movement of an ordinary sentence becomes magically embarrassing, introduces a strange resistance, frustrates any effort at definition as soon as you take it out of circulation to examine it separately and look for its meaning after taking away its instantaneous function.

Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being helpless prey to impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, drops him, promises and betrays, and -crowning injury- inflicts on him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.

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.

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.

God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.

Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.

History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.

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.

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

The future, like everything else, is not what it used to be.

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

Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.

Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.