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

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More quotes from: Jean Rostand

• "A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would ..."
• "A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few ..."
• "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 ..."
• "Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued. "
• "Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing ..."
• "Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity ..."
• "God, that checkroom of our dreams. "
• "God, that dumping ground of our dreams. "
• "Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness. "
• "I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ..."
• "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 ..."
• "In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times ..."
• "In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's. "
• "It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the ..."
• "It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is ..."
• "It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths. "
• "It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not ..."
• "It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed. "
• "Kill a man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are ..."

• "Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much ..."
• "Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their ..."
• "Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth. "
• "One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the ..."
• "Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable. "
• "Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have ..."
• "Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men. "
• "Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. ..."
• "Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole ..."
• "Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they ..."
• "The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack ..."
• "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. "
• "There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of ..."
• "Think? Why think! We have computers to do that for us. "
• "To be adult is to be alone. "
• "To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should. "
• "To say of men that they are bad is to say they are worse than ..."
• "Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it. "

• "We are not nanve enough to ask for pure men; we ask merely for men ..."
• "We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its ..."
• "When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, ..."