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.

It is horrible to see everything that one detested in the past coming back wearing the colors of the future.

I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence.

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.

On the brink of being satiated, desire still appears infinite.

Being right is less important to us than the freedom to be wrong.

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.