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

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That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
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No work of art is ever completed, it is only abandoned.
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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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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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That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
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To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
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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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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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Every man expects some miracle — either from his mind or from his body or from someone else or from events.
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Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.
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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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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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History is the science of what never happens twice.
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The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, ... since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted.There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.
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Everything changes but the avant-garde.
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The wind is rising ... we must attempt to live.
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