Paul Valery

“La meilleure façon de réaliser ses rêves est de se réveiller.”

“A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.”

“The stranger’s way of looking at things, the eye of a man who does not recognize, who is beyond this world, the eye as frontier between being & non-being — belongs to the thinker. It is also the eye of a dying man, a man losing recognition.”

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

“You have made yourself an island of time, you are a time that has become detached from that vast Time in which your indefinite duration has the subsistence and eternity of a smoke-ring.”

“As for the world, all reality has no other excuse for existence except to offer the poet the chance to play a sublime match against it -- a match that is list in advance.”

“I have made a similar suggestion for poetry: that one should approach it as pure sonority, reading and rereading it as a sort of music, and should not introduce meanings or intentions into the diction before clearly grasping the system of sounds that every poem must offer on pain of nonexistence.”

“The deeper education consists in unlearning one's first education.”

“His heart is a desert island.... The whole scope, the whole energy of his mind surround and protect him; his depths isolate him and guard him against the truth. He flatters himself that he is entirely alone there.... Patience, dear lady. Perhaps, one day, he will discover some footprint on the sand.... What holy and happy terror, what salutary fright, once he recognizes in that pure sign of grace that his island is mysteriously inhabited!...”

“How can one not feel enthusiasm for the man who never said anything vague?”

“Stupidity is not my strong point.”

“What soul would hesitate to turn the universe upside down in order to be a little more itself?”

“O thoughtful waste of my days! What an artist I have destroyed!”

“This, dear Phaedrus, is the most important point: no geometry without the word. Without it, figures are accidents, and neither make manifest nor serve the power of the mind.”

“I would hear the song of the columns and visualize in the pure sky the monument of a melody.”

“I think of the presence and of the habits of mortals in this so fluid stream, and reflect that I was among them, striving to see all things just as I see them at this very moment. I then placed Wisdom in the eternal station which now is ours. But from here all is unrecognizable. Truth is before us, and we no longer understand anything at all.”

“O Socrates, the universe cannot for one instant endure to be only what it is. It is strange to think that that which is All cannot be sufficient unto itself!”

“She is entirely in her closed eyes, and quite alone with her soul, in the bosom of the most intimate attention... She feels in herself that she is becoming some event.”

“Admirable man, who know teeth by dreams, think you that all those of philosophers are decayed?”

“Anxious to know, yet only too happy to ignore, we seek in what is, a remedy for what is not; and in what is not a relief from what is. Now the real, now illusion is our refuge; and the soul has finally no other resource but the true, which is her weapon -- and falsehood, which is her armor.”

“Each of them, all unknowing, fairly gives its due to each chance of life, to each germ of death within itself.”

“But Socrates cannot but have been meditating upon something?... Can he ever remain solitary with himself -- and silent to his very soul!”

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

“By giving the name of progress to its own tendency to a fatal precision, the world is seeking to add to the benefits of life the advantages of death.”

“I am not averse to generalizing the notion of "modern" to designate a certain way of life, rather than making it purely a synonym of 'contemporary'. There are moments and places in history to which 'we moderns' could return without too greatly disturbing the harmony of those times, without seeming objects infinitely curious and conspicuous... creatures shocking, dissonant, and unassailable.”

“But hope is only man's mistrust of the clear foresight of his mind.”

“Everything has not been lost, but everything has sensed that it might perish.”

“We see now that the abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all.”

“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.”

“En iyi yapıt, gizini uzun süre saklayandır. Uzun süre bir gizi olduğu bile anlaşılmaz.”

“Kimi zaman penceredeki manzara, duvara asılmış bir tablodur yalnızca; kimi zaman oda, orada olmamı değil, bütünü görmemi engelleyen, ağaçlar arasında bir kabuktan başka bir şey değildir.”

“L'histoire est le produit le plus dangereux que la chimie de l'intellect ait élaboré. Ses propriétés sont bien connues. Il fait rêver, il enivre les peuples, leur engendre de faux souvenirs, exagère leurs réflexes, entretient leurs vieilles plaies, les tourmente dans leur repos, les conduit au délire des grandeurs ou à celui de la persécution, et rend les nations amères, superbes, insupportables et vaines.L'histoire justifie ce que l'on veut. Elle n'enseigne rigoureusement rien, car elle contient tout, et donne des exemples de tout.”

“Sentimentul de a fi tot si evidenta de a nu fi nimic.”

“What a pity to see a mind as great as Napoleon's devoted to trivial things such as empires, historic events, the thundering of cannons and of men; he believed in glory, in posterity, in Caesar; nations in turmoil and other trifles absorbed all his attention ... How could he fail to see that what really mattered was something else entirely?”

“Ingres’ pencil pursues ideal grace to the point of monstrosity: the spine never long and supple enough, the neck flexible enough, the thighs smooth enough, or all the curves of the body sufficiently beguiling to the eye, which envelopes and caresses more than it seems them. The Odalisque, with a hint of the plesiosaurus about her, makes one wonder what might have resulted from a carefully controlled selection, through the centuries, of a breed of woman specially designed for pleasure – as the English horse is bred for racing.”

“To enter into your own mind you need to be armed to the teeth.”

“Noi, civilizaţiile, ştim acum că suntem muritoare. Am auzit vorbindu-se de lumi dispărute cu totul, de imperii prăbuşindu-se cu toţi oamenii şimaşinăriile lor, căzute în groapa inexplicabilă a secolelor, cu zeii, cu legile lor, cu academiile şiştiinţelor lor pure şi aplicative, cu gramaticile şi dicţionarele lor, cu clasicii, romanticii şisimboliştii lor, cu criticii şi critica criticilor lor. Ştim că pământul întreg e făcut din cenuşă şi căcenuşa semnifică ceva. Zărim prin ceaţa deasă a istoriei fantomele imenselor nave încărcate cubogăţiile spiritului. Nu le putem număra. (...). Vedem că prăpastia istoriei este destul deîncăpătoare pentru toată lumea. Simţim că o civilizaţie are aceeaşi fragilitate ca şi o viaţă.”

“Car j'ai vécu de vous attendre,Et mon coeur n'était que vos pas.”

“God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly”

“Les livres ont les mêmes ennemis que l'homme : le feu, l'humide, les bêtes, le temps, et leur propre contenu.”

“İlk dize Tanrı'dan gelir; gerisi size kalmış.”

“Poetry is a separate language, or more specifically, a language within a language.”

“Degas is one of the very few painters who have given the floor its true importance.”

“The confused murmur of his nights began to rise, expected but not familiar”

“Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our emotions.”

“What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion; what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.”

“Une philosophie doit etre portative.”

“There is no theory that is not a fragment, carefully prepared, of some autobiography.”

“Sometime I think; and sometime I am.”

“Cognition reigns but does not rule.”