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We hope vaguely but dread precisely.

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
Vaguely
Dread
Precisely
Hope

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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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No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
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What is simple is false and what is not is useless.
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The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.
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Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives.
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What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.
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Stupidity is not my strong suit.
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Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
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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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There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
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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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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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A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
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Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.
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A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
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Science is a collection of successful recipes.
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Cognition reigns but does not rule.
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Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas the interest of science lies in the art of making science.
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The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.
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Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
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