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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."

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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."

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Amber Hurdle

"History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes."

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Amber Hurdle

"There were in the camp a number of Mexican slaves and these ran forth calling out in spanish and were brained or shot and one of the Delawares emerged from the smoke with a naked infant dangling in each hand and squatted at a ring of midden stones and swung them by the heels each in turn and bashed their heads against the stones so that the brains burst forth through the fontanel in a bloody spew and humans on fire came shrieking forth like berserkers and the riders hacked them down with their enormous knives and a young woman ran up and embraced the bloodied forefeet of Glanton's warhorse."

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Amber Hurdle

"The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself."

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Amber Hurdle

"If anyone thinks they'd rather be in a different part of history, they're probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You'd probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman."

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Amber Hurdle

"By studying human history, we can realize how much of human stupidity has fallen on fertile ground. Is gravity guilty for such an occurrence too?"

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Amber Hurdle

"Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years."

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Amber Hurdle

"The course of history is determined not by battles, by sieges, or usurpation, but by the individuals. The strongest army is, at its most basic level, a collection of individuals. Their decisions, their passions, their foolishness, and their dreams shape the years to come. If there is any lesson to be learned from history, it is that all too often the fate of armies, of cities, of entire realms rests upon the actions of one person's decision, good or bad, right or wrong, big or small, can unwittingly change the world.But history can be quite the slattern. One never knows who that person is, where he might be, or what decision he might male.It is almost enough to make me believe in destiny."

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Amber Hurdle

"The becoming of man is the history of the exhaustion of his possibilities."

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Amber Hurdle

"We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktaw; we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable."

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Amber Hurdle

"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

Explore more quotes by Paul Valery

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Paul Valery
"Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content."
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Paul Valery
"In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well."
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Paul Valery
"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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Paul Valery
"A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts."
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Paul Valery
"Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken."
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Paul Valery
"Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious."
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Paul Valery
"History is the science of things which are not repeated."
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Paul Valery
"Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business."
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Paul Valery
"The universe is built on a plan the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect."
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Paul Valery
"Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature."
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