I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.

I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism.

Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race.

It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.

Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.

Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.