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Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

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
Preventing
Politics
Business
Art
Political
People

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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
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It seems to me that the soul, when alone with itself and speaking to itself, uses only a small number of words, none of them extraordinary.
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to live means to lack something at every moment
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At times I think and at times I am.
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The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
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An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
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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.
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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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There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
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Growing nations should remember that, in nature, no tree, though placed in the best conditions of light, soil, and plot, can continue to grow and spread indefinitely.
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That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
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Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.
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Cognition reigns but does not rule.
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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.
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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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Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
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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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In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quantity of anything without changing its quality. Similar figures exist only in pure geometry.
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[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.
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I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.
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