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@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Mauvaises Pensées et Autres (1941)

“What grace of light, what pure toil goes to form
The manifold diamond of the elusive foam!
What peace I feel begotten at that source!
When sunlight rests upon a profound sea,
Time's air is sparkling, dream is certainty —
Pure artifice both of an eternal Cause.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Quel pur travail de fins éclairs consume
Maint diamant d'imperceptible écume,
Et quelle paix semble se concevoir!
Quand sur l'abîme un soleil se repose,
Ouvrages purs d'une éternelle cause,
Le temps scintille et le songe est savoir.
As translated by by C. Day Lewis
Charmes ou poèmes (1922)

“Now present here, the future takes its time.
The brittle insect scrapes at the dry loam;
All is burnt up, used up, drawn up in air
To some ineffably rarefied solution...
Life is enlarged, drunk with annihilation,
And bitterness is sweet, and the spirit clear.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Ici venu, l'avenir est paresse.
L'insecte net gratte la sécheresse;
Tout est brûlé, défait, reçu dans l'air
A je ne sais quelle sévère essence . . .
La vie est vaste, étant ivre d'absence,
Et l'amertume est douce, et l'esprit clair.
As translated by by C. Day Lewis
Charmes ou poèmes (1922)

“A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to … emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), p. 55

“Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of "truth" and the language of "creation."”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Littérature (1930)

“What's loftiest in the mind can only live through growth.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Lucretius, p. 171
Dialogue de l'arbre (1943)

“Man can act only because he can ignore.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, p. 124
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

“I said that to invite minds to concern themselves with Mind and its destiny was a sign and symptom of the times. Would that idea have occurred to me, had not a whole body of impressions been sufficiently significant and powerful to reflect themselves in me, and for that reflection to become action? And that action, which consists of expressing it in your presence, would not perhaps have been accomplished had I not felt that my impressions were those of many other people, that the sensation of a diminution of mind, of a menace to culture, of a twilight of the most pure gods was a sensation which imposed itself with increasing strength on all those who are capable of feeling something in the order of superior values of which we are speaking.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), p. 172

“My soul is nothing now but the dream dreamt by matter struggling with itself!”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Eryximachus, p. 27
L'Âme et la danse (1921)

“What is most beautiful is of necessity tyrannical.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Eupalinos quoted by Phaedrus, p. 86
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

“An intelligent woman is a woman with whom one can be as stupid as one wants.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Mauvaises Pensées et Autres (1941)

“What are mortals for?—Their business is to know. Know? And what is to know?—It is assuredly: not to be what one is.—And so here are humans raving and thinking, introducing into nature the principle of unlimited error, and myriads of marvels!”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Eryximachus, p. 52
L'Âme et la danse (1921)

“We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

La Crise de l'Esprit (1919)

“Nay, who knows, Phaedrus, if the efforts of humans in their search for God, the observances, the prayers they essay, their obstinate will to discover the most efficacious… who knows if mortals will not finally discover a certitude—or an incertitude—stable and in exact conformity with their nature, if not with the very nature of God?”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, p. 130. Ellipsis in original.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

“The very object of an art, the principle of its artifice, is precisely to impart the impression of an ideal state in which the man who reaches it will be capable of spontaneously producing, with no effort of hesitation, a magnificent and wonderfully ordered expression of his nature and our destinies.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Remarks on Poetry in The Art of Poetry (1958)

“This quiet roof, where dove-sails saunter by,
Between the pines, the tombs, throbs visibly.
Impartial noon patterns the sea in flame —
That sea forever starting and re-starting.
When thought has had its hour, oh how rewarding
Are the long vistas of celestial calm!”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes, Entre les pins palpite, entre les tombes; Midi le juste y compose de feux La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée O récompense après une pensée Qu'un long regard sur le calme des dieux! Le Cimetière Marin · Online original and translation as "The Graveyard By The Sea" by C. Day Lewis http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/%7Ecooneys/poems/fr/valery.daylewis.html Variant translations: The sea, the ever renewing sea! Charmes ou poèmes (1922)

“[T]he soul of love is the invincible difference of lovers, while its subtle matter is the identity of their desires.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Phaedrus, p. 47
L'Âme et la danse (1921)

“Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Moralités (1932)

“Man discerns three great things in the All: he finds there his body, he finds there his soul—and then there is the rest of the world. Between these things there is an unceasing commerce, and sometimes even a confusion arises; but always after a certain time has elapsed, these three things come to be clearly distinguished from one another.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, p. 128
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

“I cannot think that there exists more than one Sovereign Good.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, p. 81
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)