Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.
We find it easy to believe that praise is sincere: why should anyone lie in telling us the truth?
It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not sure enough of their souls.
Literature: proclaiming in front of everyone what one is careful to conceal from one's immediate circle
A married couple are well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time.
Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.
We give others praise which we ourselves don't believe, as long as they respond with praise we can believe.
It is horrible to see everything that one detested in the past coming back wearing the colors of the future.
To be able to observe with a stranger's eye helps one to see with an artist's eye. What alienates us inspires.
Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.
Hatred, for the man who is not engaged in it, is a little like the odor of garlic for one who hasn't eaten any.
One kills a man, one is an assassin; one kills millions, one is a conqueror; one kills everybody, one is a god.
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.
There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at extremely low cost.
Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.
The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.
Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt.
Whether man is disposed to yield to nature or to oppose her, he cannot do without a correct understanding of her language
What makes our opponents useful is that they allow us to believe that without them we would be able to realize our goals.
What scientist would not long to go on living, if only to see how the little truths he has brought to light will grow up?
We bestow on others praise in which we do not believe, on condition that in return they bestow upon us praise in which we do.
We are not naïve enough to ask for pure men; we ask merely for men whose impurity does not conflict with the obligations of their job.
A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.
Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.
Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.
To say of men that they are bad is to say they are worse than we think we are, or worse than the ideal man whose image we have built up on the basis of a certain few.
Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that one could regret their not ranking among the achievements of the human mind.
It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.
A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.
When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.
On tue un homme, on est un assassin. On tue des millions d'hommes, on est un conquérant. On les tue tous, on est un dieu. Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
If a given scientist had not made a given discovery, someone else would have done so a little later. Johann Mendel dies unknown after having discovered the laws of heredity: thirty-five years later, three men rediscover them. But the book that is not written will never be written. The premature death of a great scientist delays humanity; that of a great writer deprives it.