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
ignorance men precious-gifts
Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This is a precious gift.
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.
simple
Everything that is simple is theoratically false, everything that is complicated is pragmatically useless.
deeply moment others
What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
future
The future, like everything else, is not what it used to be.
people
Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
god shows void
God made everything out of the void, but the void shows through
consumed energy power ten ultimate uses
The ultimate ""computer,"" our own brain, uses only ten watts of power -- one-tenth the energy consumed by a hundred-watt bulb.
civilization knows mortals
We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.
equality men people
Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.
quality world size
In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quantity of anything without changing its quality. Similar figures exist only in pure geometry.
art lying science
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.
giving balance world
The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.
writing differences hands
There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.