The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, Vol. 14 Quotes

“A simple statement is bound to be untrue. One that is not simple cannot be utilized.”
― Paul Valéry, The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, Vol. 14

“I have put my trust and soul in flowers. Occult flowers, flowers of premonition.”
― Paul Valéry, The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, Vol. 14

“Things get themselves done, on their own initiative. People make believe to do them, go through the motions. But crimes, works of art, and love affairs shape themselves without our intervention and weave a web in which we get entangled, while pretending to be working on it. We should be hard put to it to bring to birth the simplest act if we, who are nothing, had only ourselves to count on. I said "the simplest act," but this holds for acts of every sort—for nothing's really simple. The mere fact that we call an act "simple" or "simpler" proves we are strangers to it. The real "units" are not men; the real actors, real authors have no human face. Everything takes place between beings that pass our comprehension. Thus Man, perhaps, is not the unit, the element to pick on, when it comes to thinking out the basic meaning of things . . . human things included.”
― Paul Valéry, The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, Vol. 14

“You can never be too subtle, and you can never be too simple.”
― Paul Valéry, The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, Vol. 14