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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
Alone
Kind
Translation
Translations
Fidelity
Betrayal
Meaning

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A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
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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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Science is a collection of successful recipes.
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Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
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The most ridiculous were those who, on their own authority, made themselves the judges and justices of the tribe. They seemed never to suspect that our judgments judge us, and that nothing exposes our weaknesses and reveals ourselves more naively than the attitude of pronouncing upon our neighbors.
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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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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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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.
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A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
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A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
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A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
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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.
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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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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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There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
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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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The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
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Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
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