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Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.

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
Precise
Leads
Often
Ideas
Nothing
Men

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The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.
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We hope vaguely but dread precisely.
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[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.
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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.
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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.
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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 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.
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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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What is simple is false and what is not is useless.
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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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A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
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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.
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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.
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We need to wake up from a thought that lasts too long.
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The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices
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Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
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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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A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
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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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