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.
I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.
A married couple are well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time.
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.
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.
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.
Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one's taste for choosing.
Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.
In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.
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.
Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.
The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.
