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A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

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
Infinitely
Complicated
Thoughts
Men
Thinking

More quotes by Paul Valery

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We need to wake up from a thought that lasts too long.
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No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
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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.
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A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
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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.
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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.
Paul Valery
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My hand feels touched as well as it touches reality says this, and nothing more.
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.
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Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
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The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.
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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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What is simple is false and what is not is useless.
Paul Valery
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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.
Paul Valery
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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.
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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At times I think and at times I am.
Paul Valery
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Stupidity is not my strong suit.
Paul Valery
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Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives.
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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[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.
Paul Valery