Paul Valéry citáty

page 3

„Poézia je pre prózu ako tanec pre chôdzu.“

„Básne nikdy nie sú dokončené - len opustené.“

„Najlepší spôsob, ako si splniť svoje sny, je zobudiť sa.“

„Žiť znamená v každom okamihu niečo postrádať.“

„Žiadne šťastie z lásky nie je rovnocenné bolesti nad jej stratou.“

„Boh stvoril muža, a pretože sa mu nezdal dosť sám, dal mu družku, aby mu dal hlbšie pocítiť samotu.“

„Inteligentná žena je tá, s ktorou môžeme byť takí hlúpi, akí len chceme.“

„Mladosť sa veľmi mýli, ale je natoľko nestála a premenlivá, že sa vlastne nemôže mýliť dlho.“

„Ťažkosť našej doby spočíva v tom, že budúcnosť už nie je tá, čo bývala.“

„Normálny je ten človek, ktorý si šialenstvo stráži vo svojom vnútri.“

„Máme len slabé nádeje, ale jasné obavy.“

„Človek je absurdný tým, čo hľadá, je však veľký tým, čo nachádza.“

„Láska je ako mesiac: keď nerastie, zmenšuje sa.“

„Bohužiaľ, budúcnosť už nie je tým, čím bývala.“

„Byť človekom znamená nejasne cítiť, že v každom je niečo zo všetkých, a vo všetkých je niečo z každého.“

„Čudná schopnosť vykonávať veci životu úplne ľahostajné tak starostlivo, zúrivo a so zaujatím, akoby na tom závisel život, tomu hovorím žiť.“

„Manželstvo je ako divadelná premiéra. Tí, ktorí sú pred oponou, čakajú a nič netušia. My za oponou zase nič neprezradíme.“

„Novota je to, čo sa vo svete najrýchlejšie míňa.“

„Opravdiví nepriatelia sú mlčanliví.“

„Ozajstná hodnota lásky je vzostup základnej životnosti, ktorý láska môže spôsobiť.“

„Politika je umenie varovať ľudí pred tým, aby sa držali bokom od vecí, ktoré sa ich bezprostredne týkajú.“

„Prvý verš básne autor dostane, druhý už musí urobiť sám.“

„Takmer všetko, čo povieme o poézii, je priamo prospešné pre každého, v ktorého vnútornom živote sa táto zvláštna sila, čo prebúdza túžbu alebo ju plodí, prejavuje ako nevysvetliteľná vnútorná potreba…“

„Tí, čo sa ľakajú vtipov, neveria vo vlastné sily. Sú to Herkulovia, ktorí sa boja štekania.“

„Veľkí ľudia umierajú dvakrát: raz ako ľudia, druhý raz ako veľkí.“

„Všetci naši nepriatelia sú smrteľní. Lenže kedy…“

“Beautiful heaven, true heaven, look how I change!
After such arrogance, after so much strange
Idleness — strange, yet full of potency —
I am all open to these shining spaces;
Over the homes of the dead my shadow passes,
Ghosting along — a ghost subduing me.”

“Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest.”

“If the state is strong, it crushes us. If it is weak, we perish.”

“The being filled with wonder is lovely, like a flower.”

“The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, … since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted.
There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.”

“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.”

“In the Beginning was the Fable.”

“Most people in reasoning, dear Phaedrus, use notions that not only are "ready-made," but have actually been made by nobody. No one is responsible for them, and so they serve everyone badly.”

“Man's deepest glances are those that go out to the void. They converge beyond the All.”

“A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.”

“It is therefore reasonable to think that the creations of man are made either with a view to his body, and that is the principle we call utility, or with a view to his soul, and that is what he seeks under the name of beauty. But, further, since he who constructs or creates has to deal with the rest of the world and with the movement of nature, which both tend perpetually to dissolve, corrupt or upset what he makes, he must recognize and seek to communicate to his works a third principle, that expresses the resistance he wishes them to offer to their destiny, which is to perish. So he seeks solidity or lastingness.”

“Great things are accomplished by men who are not conscious of the impotence of man. Such insensitiveness is precious.
But we must admit that criminals are not unlike our heroes in this respect.”

“Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.”

“The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.”

“Reason, sometimes, seems to me to be the faculty our soul possesses of understanding nothing about our body!”

“It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary—and not only necessary but urgent—to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate.”

“The greatest liberty is born of the greatest rigor.”

“But still less should the gold of rich men lazily sleep its heavy sleep in the urns and gloom of treasuries. This so weighty metal, when it becomes the associate of a fancy, assumes the most active virtues of the mind. It has her restless nature. Its essence is to vanish. It changes into all things, without being itself changed. It raises blocks of stone, pierces mountains, diverts rivers, opens the gates of fortresses and the most secret hearts; it enchains men; it dresses, it undresses women with an almost miraculous promptitude. It is truly the most abstract agent that exists, next to thought. But thought exchanges and envelops images only, whereas gold incites and promotes the transmutations of all real things into one another; itself remaining incorruptible, and passing untainted through all hands.”

“And do not humans strive in a thousand ways to fill or to break the eternal silence of those infinite spaces that affright them?”

“You have experienced nothing that was not both lawful and obscure, and thus conforming perfectly to the human machine. Are we not organized fantasy? And is not our living system functioning incoherency, disorder in action? Do not events, desires, ideas interchange within us in the most necessary and incomprehensible ways?”

“Is not to meditate to deepen oneself in Order?”

“It is therefore reasonable to think that the creations of man are made either with a view to his body, and that is the principle we call utility, or with a view to his soul, and that is what he seeks under the name of beauty.”

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

“A good poet is of no more use to his country than a good petanque player.”

“A poem is never finished; it's always an accident that puts a stop to it-that is to say, gives it to the public.”

“My hand feels touched as well as it touches; reality says this, and nothing more.”

“Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated.”

“We have always sought explanations when it was only representations that we could seek to invent.”