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.
Jean Rostand

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.
Jean Rostand

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

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

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

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.
Jean Rostand

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

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.
Jean Rostand

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

God, that dumping ground of our dreams.
Jean Rostand


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

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.
Jean Rostand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.
Jean Rostand