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Poems are never finished - just abandoned

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
Never
Abandoned
Poems
Finished

More quotes by Paul Valery

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Thanks to photography, the eye grew accustomed to anticipate what it should see and to see it and it learned not to see nonexistent things which, hitherto, it had seen so clearly.
Paul Valery
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Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Paul Valery
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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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Collect all the facts that can be collected about the life of Racine and you will never learn from them the art of his verse. All criticism is dominated by the outworn theory that the man is the cause of the work as in the eyes of the law the criminal is the cause of the crime. Far rather are they both the effects.
Paul Valery
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Cognition reigns but does not rule.
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.
Paul Valery
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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
Paul Valery
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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.
Paul Valery
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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.
Paul Valery
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There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
Paul Valery
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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.
Paul Valery
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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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An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
Paul Valery
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It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
Paul Valery
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That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
Paul Valery
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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.
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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[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.
Paul Valery
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The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
Paul Valery
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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
Paul Valery