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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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We hope vaguely but dread precisely.
Paul Valery
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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
Paul Valery
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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.
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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My hand feels touched as well as it touches reality says this, and nothing more.
Paul Valery
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Science is a collection of successful recipes.
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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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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History is the science of what never happens twice.
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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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
Paul Valery
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Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.
Paul Valery
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One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.
Paul Valery
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The dog has made man their God, if the dog was an atheist, it would be perfect.
Paul Valery
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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.
Paul Valery
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God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
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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History is the science of things which are not repeated.
Paul Valery
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A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
Paul Valery
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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.
Paul Valery