Quotes by Rostand, Jean

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

Rostand, Jean on age and aging
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"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.."

Rostand, Jean on fame
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"There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past."

Rostand, Jean on the future
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"It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not sure enough of their souls."

Rostand, Jean on agreement
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"God, that dumping ground of our dreams."

Rostand, Jean on god
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"God, that checkroom of our dreams."

Rostand, Jean on god
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"I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan."

Rostand, Jean on government
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"Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness."

Rostand, Jean on greatness
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"To hate fatigues."

Rostand, Jean on hatred
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"The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same."

Rostand, Jean on ideals and idealism
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"To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should."

Rostand, Jean on ideas
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"One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void."

Rostand, Jean on involvement
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"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."

Rostand, Jean on judgment and judges
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"Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said."

Rostand, Jean on aphorisms and epigrams
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"It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths."

Rostand, Jean on mistakes
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"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."

Rostand, Jean on mistakes
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"We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds."

Rostand, Jean on modesty
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"It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed."

Rostand, Jean on opinions
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"I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell."

Rostand, Jean on paradise
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"The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God."

Rostand, Jean on atheism
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"In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's."

Rostand, Jean on politics
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"In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day."

Rostand, Jean on politics
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"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."

Rostand, Jean on power
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"The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious."

Rostand, Jean on power
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"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."

Rostand, Jean on prejudice
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"We are not na?ve enough to ask for pure men; we ask merely for men whose impurity does not conflict with the obligations of their job."

Rostand, Jean on purity
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"I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books."

Rostand, Jean on reality
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"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."

Rostand, Jean on science
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"It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of."

Rostand, Jean on science
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"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."

Rostand, Jean on science
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"Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth."

Rostand, Jean on science
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"When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic."

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

Rostand, Jean on self-image
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"Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued."

Rostand, Jean on beauty
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"The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions."

Rostand, Jean on belief
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"Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable."

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

Rostand, Jean on books - reading
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"One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it."

Rostand, Jean on theory
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"To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts."

Rostand, Jean on thoughts and thinking
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"Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it."

Rostand, Jean on truth
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