1. It is almost as if the decline of the idea of eternity coincided with the increasing aversion to sustained effort.
Collected Works of Paul Valery, Volume 12: Degas, Manet, Morisot
2. Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.
3. 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 beings is the happy fruit of an error.
The Art of Poetry
4. Une philosophie doit etre portative.
Cahiers = Notebooks
5. Whether in science or the arts, if we look for the source of an achievement we can observe that what a man does either repeats or refutes what someone else has done — repeats it in other tones, refines or amplifies or simplifies it, loads or overloads it with meaning; or else rebuts, overturns, destroys, and denies it, but thereby assumes it and has invisibly used it. Opposites are born from opposites.
