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A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.

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
Poem
Meaning
Poetry
Art
Vanishes

More quotes by Paul Valery

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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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The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
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A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
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The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
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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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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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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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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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The mind has transformed the world, and the world is repaying it with interest. It has led man where he had no idea how to go.
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Science is a collection of successful recipes.
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A really free mind is scarcely attached to its opinions. If the mind cannot help giving birth to ... emotions and affections which at first appear to be inseparable from them, it reacts against these intimate phenomena it experiences against its will.
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Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
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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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Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.
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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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No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
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A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery