Best 71 quotes of Jean Rostand on MyQuotes

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.

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.

Already at the origin of the species man was equal to what he was destined to become.

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

A married couple are well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time.

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.

Being right is less important to us than the freedom to be wrong.

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

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.

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

God, that checkroom of our dreams.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is horrible to see everything that one detested in the past coming back wearing the colors of the future.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Le biologiste passe, la grenouille reste. The biologist passes, the frog remains.

Marriage simplifies life and complicates the day.

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

Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.

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

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

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

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

On tue un homme, on est un assassin. On tue des millions d'hommes, on est un conquérant. On les tue tous, on est un dieu. Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.

Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.

Quotations--always inexact. I don't trust people who cannot even copy out.

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.

Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts.

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.

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.

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

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

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

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

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

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

Theories pass. The frog remains.

There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.