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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.

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
Grows
Plot
Nations
Soil
Though
Spread
Nature
Continue
Light
Conditions
Remember
Grow
Best
Tree
Indefinitely
Growing
Placed

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The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.
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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.
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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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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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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
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I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.
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One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.
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The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.
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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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Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
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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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There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
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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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Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
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Stupidity is not my strong suit.
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What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
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