Jean Rostand Quotes

1894-1977, French Biologist, Writer
quotes
44
topics
12
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“To hate fatigues.”
Hatred
“To be adult is to be alone.”
Adulthood
“God, that checkroom of our dreams.”
God
“God, that dumping ground of our dreams.”
God
“A man is not old as long as he is seeking something.”
Age and Aging
“Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.”
Beauty
“It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed.”
Opinions
“Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.”
Science and Scientists
“To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.”
Ideas
“Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.”
Truth
“In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.”
Politicians and Politics
“Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.”
Books and Reading
“I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.”
Reality
“The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.”
Power
“The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.”
Ideals and Idealism
“It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.”
Mistakes
“The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.”
Belief
“Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.”
Critics and Criticism
“The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.”
Admiration
“I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence.”
Understanding
“Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.”
Greatness
“The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.”
Atheism
“There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.”
Future
“One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.”
Involvement
“In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.”
Politicians and Politics
“It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.”
Science and Scientists
“We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.”
Modesty
“One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.”
Theory
“I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.”
Paradise