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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.

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
Art
Rhythms
Ideas
Consists
Work
Rhythm
Seeking
Poet
Poetry
Less
Words
Predominant

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Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
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Everything changes but the avant-garde.
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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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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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The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.
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Thanks to photography, the eye grew accustomed to anticipate what it should see and to see it and it learned not to see nonexistent things which, hitherto, it had seen so clearly.
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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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There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
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Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.
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My hand feels touched as well as it touches reality says this, and nothing more.
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The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
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At times I think and at times I am.
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Stupidity is not my strong suit.
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Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
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Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives.
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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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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.
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to live means to lack something at every moment
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