adversity

advertising

avant-garde

beauty

book

brain

businessman

catastrophe

competence

cyclone

daybreak

death

depth

disorder

dream

eternity

game

health

history

ignorance

intellectual

knowing

known

leader

love

luck

madness

magic

marriage

nothingness

novel

optimist

order

philosophy

poem

poet

poetry

politeness

politics

power

Prague

psychology

reader

reading

sanity

science

self-knowledge

seriousness

skin

solitude

soul

symmetry

thought

trifle

truth

universe

vanity

voice

youth

nationality

French

occupation / innovator as

philosopher

aphorist

essayist

symbolist

innovator in the field of

symbolism

College de France

seat 38 of the Académie française

president

professor

journalist

literary critic

scientific organization

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Académie Française

PEN Club français

Q3550275

 provides the poet with ideas. A man is not a poet if it deprives him of ideas.

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.

is faced with the same enemies as people: Fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content. (Paul Valery)

is able to raze a city, but not even open a letter, untie this knotted thread.

The cyclone can raze a city, but not even open a letter, untie this knotted thread. (valery : notebook B : 85)

So far I have purposely ignored the true origin of sea shells, and attempted in my reasoning -or raving to stick as close as possible to this feigned ignorance' (valery man and sea shell in 'an anthology' : 123)

I fearthe knownmorethanthe unknown. (valery : notebook B : 4)

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

A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key. (Paul Valery)

is the idea that words were once better understood by things than by men and better understood by the laws and forces of life than by the reasoning mind.

It was believed for many ages that certain combinations of words had more power than apparent meaning... that they were better understood by things than by men-by rocks, waters, beasts, gods, buried treasures, and by the laws and forces of life better than by the reasoning mind... that they were clearer to spirits than to the human spirit. (valery 'i sometimes said to stephane mallarme' : 100)

is responsible for the extermination of the reader. The pursuit of immediate effects and of urgent entertainment has eliminated from writing all that painstaking regard for design, and from reading all that slow intensity of apprehension. The eye now seizes on a crime or a disaster, then flits away.

Politics and novels have exterminated that reader. The pursuit of immediate effects and of urgent entertainment has eliminated from writing all that painstaking regard for design, and from reading all that slow intensity of apprehension. The eye now seizes on a crime or a disaster, then flits away.

is that which means what people take it to mean.

My poems mean what people take them to mean. (Paul Valery)

is one for whom difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas rather than deprive him of them.

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)

is that which has been exterminated by politics and novels. Urgent entertainment and the pursuit of immediate effects have destroyed what was formerly a painstaking regard for design and a slow intensity of apprehension. The eye now seizes on a crime or a disaster, then flits away.

Politics and novels have exterminated that reader. The pursuit of immediate effects and of urgent entertainment has eliminated from writing all that painstaking regard for design, and from reading all that slow intensity of apprehension. The eye now seizes on a crime or a disaster, then flits away. (valery 'i sometimes said to stephane mallarme' : 96)

is that capability which one learns anew when reading a great text.

So anyone who did not put aside Mallarme's involved texts found himself engaged by slow degrees in the task of relearning how to read. (valery 'i sometimes said to stephane mallarme' : 97)

is nothing but keeping the inner madman under lock and key.

A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key. - Paul Valery, Mauvaises pensees et autres, 1942

is a form of knowledge which, in its early stages, gave itself definitive objectives:To live always, to make gold, to know everything. Having now become 'alive', it is absolutely impossible for it to find itself a goal, or even a problem that, if solved, would allow science to reach its end.

is a feeling that God made man feel more keenly by giving him a companion.

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

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

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

is that which on all such occasions the accent and tempo of the voice are more important than the intelligible meaning of what was said . . . And they are addressed to our lives more than to our minds.

On all such occasions the accent and tempo of the voice are more important than the intelligible meaning of what is said, and they are addressed to our lives much more than to our minds. (valery 'i sometimes said to stephane mallarme' : 101)

Paul ValeryThinkers

Paul Valery