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One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.

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
Feathers
Bird
Light
Like
Feather

More quotes by Paul Valery

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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.
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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If disorder is the rule with you, you will be penalized for installing order.
Paul Valery
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A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
Paul Valery
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History is the science of what never happens twice.
Paul Valery
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Poems are never finished - just abandoned
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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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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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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Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives.
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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We need to wake up from a thought that lasts too long.
Paul Valery
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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.
Paul Valery
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Everything changes but the avant-garde.
Paul Valery
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What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.
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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A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
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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A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
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