Paul Valéry — a remark

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“Our minds live on difference; the gap exists, while fullness leaves them inert.”

Original: L'esprit vit de différence, l'écart existe, la plénitude le laisse inerte. — Intellectual life depends upon contrast, tension and incompleteness rather than perfect satisfaction. · Cahiers (French)

About Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry

30 October 1871–20 July 1945

In the autumn of 1871, as France was still reeling from the trauma of the Franco-Prussian War and the violent suppression of the Paris Commune, a child was born in the Mediterranean port town of Sète who would become one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary intellects. Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules…

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