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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.

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
Thanks
Clearly
Photography
Grew
Learned
Nonexistent
Seen
Hitherto
Eye
Anticipate
Things
Accustomed

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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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Stupidity is not my strong suit.
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In the physical world, one cannot increase the size or quantity of anything without changing its quality. Similar figures exist only in pure geometry.
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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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It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.
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Cognition reigns but does not rule.
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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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The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
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A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
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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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Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
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One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.
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A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
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We need to wake up from a thought that lasts too long.
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The mind has transformed the world, and the world is repaying it with interest. It has led man where he had no idea how to go.
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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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The mere notion of photography, when we introduce it into our meditation on the genesis of historical knowledge and its true value, suggests the simple question: Could such and such a fact, as it is narrated here, have been photographed?
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