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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.

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
Translation
Translations
Fidelity
Betrayal
Meaning
Alone
Kind

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That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
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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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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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An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.
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What golden hour of life, what glittering moment will ever equal the pain its loss can cause?
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Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
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Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.
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A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
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If disorder is the rule with you, you will be penalized for installing order.
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The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
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It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary - and not only necessary but urgent - to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate.
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It seems to me that the soul, when alone with itself and speaking to itself, uses only a small number of words, none of them extraordinary.
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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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Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.
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One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.
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The mere notion of photography, when we introduce it into our meditation on the genesis of historical knowledge and its true value, suggests the simple question: Could such and such a fact, as it is narrated here, have been photographed?
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The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.
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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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The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices
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