Paul Valéry Quotes

What has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has all the possibilities of being false.

Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our feelings.

War is a massacre between people who do not know each other, for the benefit of people who do know each other but do not massacre each other.

When someone licks the soles of your shoes, put your foot on top of them before they start to bite you.

Books have the same enemies as man: fire, humidity, animals, time, and their own content.

All our enemies are mortal.

A lonely man is always in bad company.

What unforeseen thing can there be for the one who has foreseen nothing?

Poetry is the ambition to discourse, which aspires to be laden with more meanings and anointed with more music than ordinary language.

The gods facilitate the first verse; the rest, the poet makes.

What does not resemble anything does not exist.

The deepest part of man is his skin.