...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 ValeryThe mere notion of photography, when we introduce it into our meditation on the genesis of historical knowledge and its true value, suggests the simple question: Could such and such a fact, as it is narrated here, have been photographed?
Paul ValeryEvery social system is more or less against nature, and at every moment nature is at work to reclaim her rights.
Paul ValeryThe world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.
Paul Valery