Paul Valéry Quote

Every man carries within himself a dictator and an anarchist.

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

Paul Valéry

Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our feelings.

Paul Valéry

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.

Paul Valéry

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

Paul Valéry

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

Paul Valéry

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

Paul Valéry

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

Paul Valéry

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

Paul Valéry

What does not resemble anything does not exist.

Paul Valéry

The deepest part of man is his skin.

Paul Valéry