The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.

Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn.

Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.

The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.

When it is said that an object occupies a large space in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand perceptions or memories, and that in this sense it pervades them, although it does not itself come into view.

In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture.