Paul Valery Mean Quotations

My poems mean what people take them to mean.

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

It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.

The "determinist" swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression "know everything" means nothing.

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.

to live means to lack something at every moment

To hit someone means to adopt his point of view.

We are wont to condemn self-love; but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.