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Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry

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Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction , his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 12 different years.

Valéry was born to a Corsican father and Genoese-Istrian mother in Sète, a town on the Mediterranean coast of the Hérault, but he was raised in Montpellier, a larger urban center close by. After a traditional Roman Catholic education, he studied law at university and then resided in Paris for most of the remainder of his life, where he was, for a while, part of the circle of Stéphane Mallarmé.

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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. - Paul Valery

God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.

Paul Valery

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it. - Paul Valery

An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.

Paul Valery

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business. - Paul Valery

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

Paul Valery

politics business art

Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows. - Paul Valery

Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.

Paul Valery

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. - Paul Valery

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.

Paul Valery

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. - Paul Valery

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

Paul Valery

The future, like everything else, is not what it used to be. - Paul Valery

The future, like everything else, is not what it used to be.

Paul Valery

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. - Paul Valery

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.

Paul Valery

History is the science of things which are not repeated. - Paul Valery

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

Paul Valery

science history

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

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

Love is being stupid together. - Paul Valery

Love is being stupid together.

Paul Valery

A poem is never finished, only abandoned. - Paul Valery

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

Paul Valery

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well. - Paul Valery

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.

Paul Valery

Power without abuse loses its charm. - Paul Valery

Power without abuse loses its charm.

Paul Valery

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us. - Paul Valery

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

Paul Valery

Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature. - Paul Valery

Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

Paul Valery