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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
Abandoned
Poems
Finished
Never

More quotes by Paul Valery

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The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.
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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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What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
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That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
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No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
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Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.
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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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A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
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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.
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The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.
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.
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It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
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Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
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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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One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.
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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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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
Paul Valery
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The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices
Paul Valery