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A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.

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
Leaves
Loss
Gone
Others
Great
Men

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What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.
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[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.
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The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.
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That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
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What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
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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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The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
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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.
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The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices
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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
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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.
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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.
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No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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History is the science of things which are not repeated.
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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.
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One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.
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The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.
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to live means to lack something at every moment
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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.
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