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War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.

Paul Valery

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Paul Valery
Age: 73 †
Born: 1871
Born: October 30
Died: 1945
Died: July 20
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Poet
Professor
Writer
Cette
Paul Ambroise Valéry
Paul Ambroise Valery
Paul-Ambroise Valéry
Paul Valery
Paul-Ambroise Valery
Massacre
Massacres
Antiwar
Profit
Killing
Poetry
War
People

More quotes by Paul Valery

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The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never to suspect that our judgments judge us, and that nothing exposes our weaknesses and reveals ourselves more naively than the attitude of pronouncing upon our neighbors.
Paul Valery
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It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
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A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
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Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.
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God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
Paul Valery
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A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery
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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
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A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
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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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Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.
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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Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas the interest of science lies in the art of making science.
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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It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary - and not only necessary but urgent - to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate.
Paul Valery
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Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives.
Paul Valery
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Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.
Paul Valery
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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.
Paul Valery
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Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Paul Valery
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Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest.
Paul Valery
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If what has happened in the one person were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the effects of art would disappear.
Paul Valery