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The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.

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
Stem
Verses
Harmony
Poetry
Says
Art
Indefinable
Power
Stems
Verse

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The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.
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The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.
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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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We hope vaguely but dread precisely.
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It is a sign of the times, and not a very good sign, that these days it is necessary - and not only necessary but urgent - to interest minds in the fate of Mind, that is to say, in their own fate.
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A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
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The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.
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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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Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.
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There are two ways to aquire the niceties of life: 1) To produce them or 2) To plunder them. When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
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War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.
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Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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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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My hand feels touched as well as it touches reality says this, and nothing more.
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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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It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
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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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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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