Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.

Intuition is more important to discovery than logic.

The aim of science is not things themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relation between things.

A very small cause, which escapes us, determines a considerable effect which we cannot ignore, and we say that this effect is due to chance.

It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details.

All that is not thought is pure nothingness; since we can think only thoughts, and all the words we use to speak of things can express only thoughts, to say there is something other than thought is therefore an affirmation which can have no meaning.

We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.