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A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.

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
Secrets
Secret
Others
True
Reality
Men

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Everything changes but the avant-garde.
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The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
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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.
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My hand feels touched as well as it touches reality says this, and nothing more.
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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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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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Photography invites one to give up any attempt to delineate such things as can delineate themselves.
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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.
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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?
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Science is a collection of successful recipes.
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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
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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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The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
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The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
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History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.
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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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Cognition reigns but does not rule.
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Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.
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The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
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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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