Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher.
History is the most dangerous product which the chemistry of the mind has concocted. Its properties are well known. It produces dreams and drunkenness. It fills people with false memories, exaggerates their reactions, exacerbates old grievances, torments them in their repose, and encourages either a delirium of grandeur or a delusion of persecution. It makes whole nations bitter, arrogant, insufferable and vainglorious. – Paul Valéry
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. – Paul Valery
Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our emotions. – Paul Valery
A poem is never finished, only abandoned. – Paul Valéry
What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood. – Paul Valéry
A man’s true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others. – Paul Valéry
That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false. – Paul Valery
Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content. – Paul Valery
Every social system is more or less against nature, and at every moment nature is at work to reclaim her rights. – Paul Valéry
To live means to lack something at every moment. – Paul Valery
A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone. – Paul Valéry
To enter into your own mind you need to be armed to the teeth. – Paul Valéry
Power without abuse loses its charm. – Paul Valery
What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion; what one wrote with tension and passion,another reads playfully. – Paul Valery
There are two ways to acquire the niceties of life: 1) To produce them or 2) To plunder them. When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. – Paul Valéry
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