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Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.

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
Thought
Inscriptions
Doe
Aroused
Nothing
Soon
Writing
Exist
Meet
Follow
Path
Inscription
Beautiful
Infernal

More quotes by Paul Valery

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There are two ways to aquire the niceties of life: 1) To produce them or 2) To plunder them. When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
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[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.
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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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It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
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If what has happened in the one person were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the effects of art would disappear.
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What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
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History is the science of what never happens twice.
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An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
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The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
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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.
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Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.
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What is simple is false and what is not is useless.
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History is the science of things which are not repeated.
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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.
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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.
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The mind has transformed the world, and the world is repaying it with interest. It has led man where he had no idea how to go.
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Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas the interest of science lies in the art of making science.
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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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My hand feels touched as well as it touches reality says this, and nothing more.
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