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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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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
Passion
Another
Playfully
Reads
Tension
Wrote

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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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.
Paul Valery
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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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What golden hour of life, what glittering moment will ever equal the pain its loss can cause?
Paul Valery
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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.
Paul Valery
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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
Paul Valery
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Stupidity is not my strong suit.
Paul Valery
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The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices
Paul Valery
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Science is a collection of successful recipes.
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
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The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.
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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That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
Paul Valery
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What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
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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Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
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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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 hope vaguely but dread precisely.
Paul Valery
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History is the science of what never happens twice.
Paul Valery