Paul Valery Quotes

We hope vaguely but dread precisely.

Hope and fear are inseparable.

We promise according to our hopes; we fulfill according to our fears.

We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears.

I have no illusions of the future. Or maybe it's all illusion. I don't know. I've always been ready for it.

Hope is ambiguous, but fear is precious.

The night before the Nobel announcement every year, I've gone to bed feeling quite anxious. I was optimistic, and also I knew it might never happen.

Words can't describe how one would feel in that moment after doing a test for something you really want but in your heart you don't think you have a chance of getting.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

The interval between a cold expectation and a warm desire may be filled by expectations of varying degrees of warmth or by desires of varying degrees of coldness.

I have had many troubles in my life, but the worst of them never came.

Latin Americans hold on tight even to pain and suffering, preferring a certain present to an uncertain future. Some of this is only natural, entirely human. But for us, the fear is paralyzing; it generates not only anxiety but also paralysis.

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

It's hard for me to be happy because I'm always worried about something going awry or what could happen to screw it up. It's hard for me to sit and look around, going, 'Ah, I'm really happy.' I'm not that kind of person.

Fear and hope are alike underneath.

To doubt is worse than to have lost; and to despair is but to antedate those miseries that must fall on us.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

There is something supremely reassuring about television; the worst is always yet to come.

Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

The future is called 'perhaps', which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.

Apprehensions are greater in proportion as things are unknown.

Hope and certainty are the enemies of peace.

Hope--danger's comforter

I’m concerned about all areas of uncertainty.