“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.”
More from Paul Valéry on Philosophy
“Consciousness reigns but doesn't govern.”
“What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.”
“Those who cannot attack the thought, instead attack the thinker.”
“Conscience reigns but it does not govern.”
“To penetrate one's being one must go armed to the teeth.”
“Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.”
“At times I think and at times I am.”
“The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.”
“A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.”
“God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.”
Others on Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of...”
Nietzsche
22 quotes“One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“All things flow nothing abides.”
H. L. Mencken
17 quotes“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 quotes“Consciousness is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfaction...”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
Isaac Asimov
13 quotes“Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.”