I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.
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If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him. But all nature cries aloud that He does exist that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
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To hold a pen is to be at war.
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Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well
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People have declaimed against luxury for 2000 years, in verse and in prose, and people have always delighted in it.
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Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres. (In this country England it is thought well to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others. from Candide)
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The first who was king was a fortunate soldier Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
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A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.
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If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
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Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
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I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon and a cat that comes home late at night.
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One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
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It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
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A novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.
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I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
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Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
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A fondness for satire indicates a mind pleased with irritating others for myself, I never could find amusement in killing flies.
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God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
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Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.
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Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
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The wicked can have only accomplices, the voluptuous have companions in debauchery, self-seekers have associates, the politic assemble the factions, the typical idler has connections, princes have courtiers. Only the virtuous have friends.
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Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.
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There is a vast difference between success at twenty-five and success at sixty. At sixty, nobody envies you. Instead, everybody rejoices generously, sincerely, in your good fortune.
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History is little else than a picture of human crimes and misfortunes.
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The public is a ferocious beast. One must either chain it up or flee from it.
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Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. A well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.
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The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.
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Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.
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Needless to say since Christ's expiation not one single Christian has been known to sin, or die.
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There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
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