How it works

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.

Paul Valery
Not a MindZip member yet
Discovery
Folly
Metaphor
Oracle
Paradox
Proof
Spring
Random

Explore more quotes

Power without abuse loses its charm.
Paul Valery
A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
Paul Valery
War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.
Paul Valery
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.
Paul Valery
That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
Paul Valery
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.
Paul Valery
Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
Paul Valery
In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
Paul Valery
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
Paul Valery
History is the science of things which are not repeated.
Paul Valery
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.
Paul Valery
An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
Paul Valery
Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
Paul Valery
Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.
Paul Valery
At times I think and at times I am.
Paul Valery
We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.
Paul Valery
Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
Paul Valery
Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
Paul Valery
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Paul Valery
God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
Paul Valery
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery
Politeness is organized indifference.
Paul Valery
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.
Paul Valery
The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.
Paul Valery
A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
Paul Valery
That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
Paul Valery
A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
Paul Valery
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul Valery
Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
Paul Valery
The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
Paul Valery
Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Paul Valery
Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.
Paul Valery
A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
Paul Valery
Love is being stupid together.
Paul Valery
The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
Paul Valery
A man who is "of sound mind" is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
Paul Valery
A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
Paul Valery
The future, like everything else, is not what it used to be.
Paul Valery
Every beginning is a consequence every beginning ends some thing.
Paul Valery
God created man and finding him not sufficiently alone gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
Paul Valery
A difficulty is a light. An insurmountable difficulty is a sun.
Paul Valery
What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion; what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.
Paul Valery
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
Paul Valery
The purpose of psychology is to give us wholly novel ideas about the things that we know best.
Paul Valery
To be sincere means to be the same person when one is with oneself; that is to say, alone - but that is all it means.
Paul Valery
A limited vocabulary, but one with which you can make numerous combinations, is better than thirty thousand words that only hamper the action of the mind.
Paul Valery
This joy of discovery is real, and it is one of our rewards. So too is the approval of our work by our peers.
Henry Taube
Higher education must lead the march back to the fundamentals of human relationships, to the old discovery that is ever new, that man does not live by bread alone.
John Hannah