Paul Valéry: Man

Paul Valéry was French poet, essayist, and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Paul Valéry: 178   quotes 130   likes

“God created man, and finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a female companion so that he might feel his solitude more acutely.”

Paul Valéry

Tel Quel (1943)

God , Feeling , Solitude

“Since everything that lives is obliged to expend and receive life, there is an exchange of modifications between the living creature and its environment.
And yet, once that vital necessity is satisfied, our species—a positively strange species—thinks it must create for itself other needs and tasks besides that of preserving life. … Whatever may be the origin or cause of this curious deviation, the human species is engaged in an immense adventure, an adventure whose objective and end it does not know. …
The same senses, the same muscles, the same limbs—more, the same types of signs, the same instruments of exchange, the same languages, the same modes of logic—enter into the most indispensable acts of our lives, as they figure into the most gratuitous. …
In short, man has not two sets of tools, he has only one, and this one set must serve him for the preservation of his life and his physiological rhythm, and expend itself at other times on illusions and on the labours of our great adventure. …
The same muscles and nerves produce walking as well as dancing, exactly as our linguistic faculty enables us to express our needs and ideas, while the same words and forms can be combined to produce works of poetry. A single mechanism is employed in both cases for two entirely different purposes.”

Paul Valéry

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), pp. 158-159

Life , Idea , Thinking , Sense

“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

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

World , Soul , Time

“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

Remarks on Poetry in The Art of Poetry (1958)

Art , Nature , Effort

“Man can act only because he can ignore.”

Paul Valéry

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

“The “determinist” swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression “know everything” means nothing.”

Paul Valéry

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), p. 42

“Man's deepest glances are those that go out to the void. They converge beyond the All.”

Paul Valéry

Socrates, p. 141
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

“It is therefore reasonable to think that the creations of man are made either with a view to his body, and that is the principle we call utility, or with a view to his soul, and that is what he seeks under the name of beauty. But, further, since he who constructs or creates has to deal with the rest of the world and with the movement of nature, which both tend perpetually to dissolve, corrupt or upset what he makes, he must recognize and seek to communicate to his works a third principle, that expresses the resistance he wishes them to offer to their destiny, which is to perish. So he seeks solidity or lastingness.”

Paul Valéry

Socrates, pp. 128–9
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

World , Beauty , Soul , Communication

“Great things are accomplished by men who are not conscious of the impotence of man. Such insensitiveness is precious.
But we must admit that criminals are not unlike our heroes in this respect.”

Paul Valéry

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), p. 58

Men

“It is therefore reasonable to think that the creations of man are made either with a view to his body, and that is the principle we call utility, or with a view to his soul, and that is what he seeks under the name of beauty.”

Paul Valéry

But, further, since he who constructs or creates has to deal with the rest of the world and with the movement of nature, which both tend perpetually to dissolve, corrupt or upset what he makes, he must recognize and seek to communicate to his works a third principle, that expresses the resistance he wishes them to offer to their destiny, which is to perish. So he seeks solidity or lastingness.
Socrates, pp. 128–9
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)

Beauty , Thinking , Soul

“Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated.”

Paul Valéry

Source: Unsourced