Jean Rostand Quotes

Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.

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.

We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.

My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.

Kill one man, and you are murderer.

Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.

Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.

To be adult is to be alone.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

A man is not old as long as he is seeking something.

The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.

The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.

When I was young I pitied the old. Now old, it is the young I pity.

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

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

Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.

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

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.

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

Think? Why think! We have computers to do that for us.

The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.

Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.

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

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.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that one could regret their not ranking among the achievements of the human mind.

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

Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.

We find it easy to believe that praise is sincere: why should anyone lie in telling us the truth?

Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.

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

A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.

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

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

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

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

To be able to observe with a stranger's eye helps one to see with an artist's eye. What alienates us inspires.

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

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.

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

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.

To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts.

The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.

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

It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed.

Theories pass. The frog remains.

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

In art as in life the valid sacrifices are those that bring no income.