Quote

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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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
Authority
Suspects
Tribe
Attitude
Neighbor
Judgments
Justice
Judge
Judges
Upon
Ridiculous
Weaknesses
Nothing
Seemed
Tribes
Pronouncing
Made
Weakness
Reveals
Naively
Never
Judging
Neighbors
Justices
Judgment
Suspect
Exposes

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Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
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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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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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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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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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A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
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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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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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What is simple is false and what is not is useless.
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[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.
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At times I think and at times I am.
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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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Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.
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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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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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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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If disorder is the rule with you, you will be penalized for installing order.
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