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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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Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
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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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A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
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Photography invites one to give up any attempt to delineate such things as can delineate themselves.
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One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.
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The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.
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That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
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Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest.
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An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
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History is the science of things which are not repeated.
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What is simple is false and what is not is useless.
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Stupidity is not my strong suit.
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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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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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Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
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The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices
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A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
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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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Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.
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No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
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