Paul Valery

“An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.”

“A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.”

“Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This ... is a precious gift.”

“Peace is a virtual, mute, sustained victory of potential powers against probable greeds.”

“Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human being...”

“Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.”

“Poems are never finished - just abandoned”

“Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.”

“A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”

“Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.”

“We are enriched by our reciprocate differences.”

“That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.”

“Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.”

“Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.”

“Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.”

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

“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.”