Paul Valéry — a remark

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“The ease of something explains nothing; vice has paths as arduous as those of virtue.”

Original: La facilité n'explique pas tout; et le vice a ses sentiers aussi ardus que ceux de la vertu. — Difficulty and effort are not reliable indicators of moral value or human worth. · Tel quel (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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