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[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.

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
Beauty
Makes
Despair

More quotes by Paul Valery

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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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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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We need to wake up from a thought that lasts too long.
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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
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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.
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The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.
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Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph.
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A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
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The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices
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What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.
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No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
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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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One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.
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Cognition reigns but does not rule.
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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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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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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.
Paul Valery
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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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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
Paul Valery