Famous Quotes by Jean Rostand

  • Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one’s taste for choosing. More
  • Quotations—always inexact. I don’t trust people who cannot even copy out. More
  • To say of men that they are bad is to say they are worse than we think we are, or worse than the... More
  • Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing... More
  • There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past. More
  • Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable. More
  • It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other,... More
  • God, that checkroom of our dreams. More
  • Renown? I’ve already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those... More
  • It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed. More
  • I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under... More
  • The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions. More
  • To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should. More
  • There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well. More
  • The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God. More
  • Hatred, for the man who is not engaged in it, is a little like the odor of garlic for one who... More
  • When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather... More
  • There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at... More
  • The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious. More
  • The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn’t write them... More
  • Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are. More
  • Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued. More
  • To be adult is to be alone. More
  • I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books. More
  • One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it. More
  • A body of work such as Pasteur’s is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance... More
  • It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not sure enough of their... More
  • Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness. More
  • It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths. More
  • To reflect is to disturb one’s thoughts. More
  • One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void. More
  • It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of. More
  • Kill a man one is a murderer; kill a million, a conqueror; kill them all, a God. More
  • In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one’s party three times a day. More
  • Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that... More
  • Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood—we fail to see the whole... More
  • Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth. More
  • I don’t judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise... More
  • I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence. More
  • In politics, yesterday’s lie is attacked only to flatter today’s. More
  • We are not naïve enough to ask for pure men; we ask merely for men whose impurity does not... More
  • I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell. More
  • We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds. More
  • The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same. More

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