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1 " The deeper education consists in unlearning one's first education. "
― Paul Valéry , An Anthology
2 " Stupidity is not my strong point. "
3 " We see now that the abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all. "
4 " Everything has not been lost, but everything has sensed that it might perish. "
5 " I have made a similar suggestion for poetry: that one should approach it as pure sonority, reading and rereading it as a sort of music, and should not introduce meanings or intentions into the diction before clearly grasping the system of sounds that every poem must offer on pain of nonexistence. "
6 " But hope is only man's mistrust of the clear foresight of his mind. "
7 " His heart is a desert island.... The whole scope, the whole energy of his mind surround and protect him; his depths isolate him and guard him against the truth. He flatters himself that he is entirely alone there.... Patience, dear lady. Perhaps, one day, he will discover some footprint on the sand.... What holy and happy terror, what salutary fright, once he recognizes in that pure sign of grace that his island is mysteriously inhabited!... "
8 " By giving the name of progress to its own tendency to a fatal precision, the world is seeking to add to the benefits of life the advantages of death. "
9 " I am not averse to generalizing the notion of "modern" to designate a certain way of life, rather than making it purely a synonym of 'contemporary'. There are moments and places in history to which 'we moderns' could return without too greatly disturbing the harmony of those times, without seeming objects infinitely curious and conspicuous... creatures shocking, dissonant, and unassailable. "
10 " You have made yourself an island of time, you are a time that has become detached from that vast Time in which your indefinite duration has the subsistence and eternity of a smoke-ring. "
11 " As for the world, all reality has no other excuse for existence except to offer the poet the chance to play a sublime match against it -- a match that is list in advance. "
