Quote

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.

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
Never
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Men
Law
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Racine
Life
Rather
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Outworn
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Crime
Collected
Learn
Effects
Dominated
Facts
Cause
Verse
Art
Theory
Collect
Work
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Verses

More quotes by Paul Valery

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to live means to lack something at every moment
Paul Valery
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A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
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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.
Paul Valery
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Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
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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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Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
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History is the science of what never happens twice.
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Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.
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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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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 one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.
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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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That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
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Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.
Paul Valery
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Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.
Paul Valery
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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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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.
Paul Valery
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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
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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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Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
Paul Valery