Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.

I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.

I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.

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.

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.

There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at extremely low cost.

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