I hate all explanations; they who make them deceive either themselves or the other party,-generally both.

One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.

The use of a thing is only a part of its significance. To know anything thoroughly, to have the full command of it in all its appliances, we must study it on its own account, independently of any special application.

The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it... but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.

My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.

Doubt can only be removed by action.

No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist.