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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.

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
Vision
Seeing
Names
Forget
Thing
Awe
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More quotes by Paul Valery

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Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.
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.
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We hope vaguely but dread precisely.
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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Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
Paul Valery
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Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
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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There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
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We are wont to condemn self-love but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.
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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The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
Paul Valery
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No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
Paul Valery
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The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.
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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The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
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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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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At times I think and at times I am.
Paul Valery
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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
Paul Valery