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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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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
Everything
Intellect
Furnishes
Nothing
Product
Examples
Products
Evolved
Example
Contains
Dangerous
Teaches
Teach
Precisely
History
Chemistry
Anything
Justify

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We need to wake up from a thought that lasts too long.
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A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.
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A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
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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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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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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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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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My hand feels touched as well as it touches reality says this, and nothing more.
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What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
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The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
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The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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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.
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The dog has made man their God, if the dog was an atheist, it would be perfect.
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Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
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to live means to lack something at every moment
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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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Photography invites one to give up any attempt to delineate such things as can delineate themselves.
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We hope vaguely but dread precisely.
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