Paul Valéry (October 30, 1871 - July 20, 1945) was a French author and poet of the Symbolist school.

He was born in Sète, Hérault. Living in Paris from 1892 onwards, he produced nothing for a twenty-year period, eventually breaking his silence in 1917 with La Jeune Parque. His interests were broad, including mathematics, philosophy, art and music, all of which are reflected in the corpus of his work, which also included prose and drama. Valéry's monumental "Cahiers" — notebooks he wrote every morning for fifty years — have only in the last two decades received the philosophical attention they deserve.

He was member of the Académie française, Académie des sciences de Lisbonne and Front national des Ecrivains. He died in 1945 in Paris at age 74.

Valéry's "Palme" inspired James Merrill's celebrated 1974 poem "Lost in Translation".