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That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.

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
Certain
Ironic
Always
Originality
Conformity
False
Accepted
Everywhere
Almost
Psychics
Everyone
Empowerment

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Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
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What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
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A poem is never finished, 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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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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There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
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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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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
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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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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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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 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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An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
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A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
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Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.
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