Because a fact seems strange to you, you conclude that it is not one. ... All science, however, commences by being strange. Science is successive. It goes from one wonder to another. It mounts by a ladder. The science of to-day would seem extravagant to the science of a former time. Ptolemy would believe Newton mad.

A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.

God will bless you,' said he, 'you are an angel since you take care of the flowers.' 'No,' she replied. 'I am the devil, but that's all the same to me.

The earlier works of a man of genius are always preferred to the newer ones, in order to prove that he is going down instead of up.

A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.

As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.