Paul Valery Quotes - Page 6

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• ...in song the words tend to lose their significance, do often lose it, while at the other extreme, in current prose it is the musical value that tends to disappear - so that verse stands symmetrically, as it were, between song, on the one hand, and prose on the other - and is thus admirably and delicately balanced between the sensual and the intellectual power of language.

  Paul Valery

  Song, Hands, Musical

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• Great things are accomplished by men who are not conscious of the impotence of man. Such insensitiveness is precious. But we must admit that criminals are not unlike our heroes in this respect.

  Paul Valery

  Hero, Men, Criminals

  "Reflections on the World Today" by Paul Valery, (p. 58), 1931.

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• Photography invites one to give up any attempt to delineate such things as can delineate themselves.

  Paul Valery

  Photography, Giving Up, Giving

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• The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.

  Paul Valery

  Truth, Enough, Gross

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• In most cases, when the lion, weary of obeying its master, has torn and devoured him, its nerves are pacified and it looks round for another master before whom to grovel.

  Paul Valery

  Nerves, Looks, Lions

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• Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This is a precious gift.

  Paul Valery

  Ignorance, Men, Precious Gifts

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• My hand feels touched as well as it touches; reality says this, and nothing more.

  Paul Valery

  Reality, Hands, Wells

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• The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.

  Paul Valery

  May, Absurd

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• To be sincere means to be the same person when one is with oneself; that is to say, alone - but that is all it means.

  Paul Valery

  Mean, Sincerity, Sincere

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• Sometimes I think and other times I am.

  Paul Valery

  Thinking, Sometimes, Thoughts And Thinking

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• Everything changes but the avant-garde.

  Paul Valery

  Avant Garde, Things Change

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• History is the science of things which are not repeated.

  Paul Valery

  Science

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• Sometime I think; and sometime I am.

  Paul Valery

  Thinking

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• My soul is nothing now but the dream dreamt by matter struggling with itself!

  Paul Valery

  Dream, Struggle, Soul

  "Dialogues" by Paul Valery, translated by William McCausland Stewart, Bollingen Series XLV 4/Princeton University Press, (p. 27), 1921.

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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.

  Paul Valery

  Art, Eye, Men

  "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci". Book by Paul Valery, 1895.

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• What Degas called 'a way of seeing' must consequently bear a wide enough interpretation to include way of being, power, knowledge, and will.

  Paul Valery

  Degas, Way, Bears

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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

  Photography, Eye, Thanks

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• Poems are never finished - just abandoned

  Paul Valery

  Abandoned, Finished

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• The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.

  Paul Valery

  Motive, Settlement, Treaties

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• It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.

  Paul Valery

  Mean, Law, Affection

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• The "determinist" swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression "know everything" means nothing.

  Paul Valery

  Mean, Men, Expression

  "Reflections on the World Today" by Paul Valery, (p. 42), 1931.

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• Man cannot bear his own portrait. The image of his limits and his own determinacy exasperates him, drives him mad.

  Paul Valery

  Men, Mad, Portraits

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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.

  Paul Valery

  Men, Ideas, Mind

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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.

  Paul Valery

  Mind, World, Firsts

  "Reflections on the World Today" by Paul Valery, (p. 156), 1931.

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• Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.

  Paul Valery

  Mistaken, Impeccable

  "The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe" by Julian Symons, (Pt. 1, Epilogue), 1978.

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