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Paul Valery Inspirational Quotes (83)

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A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery
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The mind has transformed the world, and the world is repaying it with interest. It has led man where he had no idea how to go.
Paul Valery
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Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.
Paul Valery
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Stupidity is not my strong suit.
Paul Valery
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to live means to lack something at every moment
Paul Valery
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There are two ways to aquire the niceties of life: 1) To produce them or 2) To plunder them. When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
Paul Valery
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Cognition reigns but does not rule.
Paul Valery
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An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
Paul Valery
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The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices
Paul Valery
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Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.
Paul Valery
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The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, ... since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted.There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.
Paul Valery
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A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.
Paul Valery
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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
Paul Valery
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The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
Paul Valery
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Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.
Paul Valery
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The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.
Paul Valery
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A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.
Paul Valery
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The mere notion of photography, when we introduce it into our meditation on the genesis of historical knowledge and its true value, suggests the simple question: Could such and such a fact, as it is narrated here, have been photographed?
Paul Valery
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That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
Paul Valery
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We are wont to condemn self-love but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.
Paul Valery
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A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
Paul Valery
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What is simple is false and what is not is useless.
Paul Valery
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We hope vaguely but dread precisely.
Paul Valery
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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
Paul Valery
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