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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.

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
Poetry
Impossible
Almost
Wells
Everything
Well
Must

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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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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
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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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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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A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
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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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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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Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.
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Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
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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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That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
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A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
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Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.
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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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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.
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The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
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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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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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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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What is simple is false and what is not is useless.
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