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

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God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
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[Beauty is] that which makes us despair.
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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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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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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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In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.
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The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
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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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Growing nations should remember that, in nature, no tree, though placed in the best conditions of light, soil, and plot, can continue to grow and spread indefinitely.
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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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Having precise ideas often leads to a man doing nothing.
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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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That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
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Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.
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The dog has made man their God, if the dog was an atheist, it would be perfect.
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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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A man's true secrets are more secret to himself than they are to others.
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A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.
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History is the science of what never happens twice.
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