Every beginning is a consequence — every beginning ends some thing.

Valéry’s aphorism insists that “beginnings” are never pure origins. What looks like a fresh start is produced by prior conditions—choices, pressures, accidents—so it is a “consequence” rather than an absolute first cause. The second clause adds a moral and psychological edge: to begin is also to close off alternatives, to end a previous state, habit, or identity. In this view, novelty carries loss; creation entails rupture. The line reflects Valéry’s broader preoccupation with process—how thought, art, and action emerge from antecedents—and it cautions against romanticizing new starts as cost-free or self-generated.