Paul Valery

“The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.”

“The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.”

“We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.”

“To write regular verses destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities, but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and totally unexpected thoughts.”

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

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

“A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.”

“The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.”

“At times I think and at times I am.”

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

“A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.”

“A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.”

“The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.”

“History is the science of things which are not repeated.”

“The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.”

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

“A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas.”

“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.”

“Man's great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to.”