Jean Rostand Quotes

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.

If a given scientist had not made a given discovery, someone else would have done so a little later. Johann Mendel dies unknown after having discovered the laws of heredity: thirty-five years later, three men rediscover them. But the book that is not written will never be written. The premature death of a great scientist delays humanity; that of a great writer deprives it.

To say of men that they are bad is to say they are worse than we think we are, or worse than the ideal man whose image we have built up on the basis of a certain few.

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts.

One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.

Kill one man and you're a murderer, kill a million and you're a conqueror.

We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.

The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.

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.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

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

It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.

In our ideals we unwittingly reveal our vices.

Kill one man, and you are murderer.

Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.

We give others praise which we ourselves don't believe, as long as they respond with praise we can believe.

One kills a man, one is an assassin; one kills millions, one is a conqueror; one kills everybody, one is a god.

Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one's taste for choosing.

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

We are not naïve enough to ask for pure men; we ask merely for men whose impurity does not conflict with the obligations of their job.

It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.

It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not sure enough of their souls.

To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.

Hatred, for the man who is not engaged in it, is a little like the odor of garlic for one who hasn't eaten any.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.