Of the experience I have of myself, I find enough to make me wise, if I were but a good scholar.
For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem.
Reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls.
One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
I have ever held it as a maxim, never to do that through another, which it was possible for me to execute myself.
If a man spreads my failings abroad, he is my master, even though he were my servant.
For if I am deceived, I am.
To prepare teachers in the method of the experimental sciences is not an easy matter.
The assaults of adversity do not weaken the spirit of a brave man. It always maintains its poise, and it gives its own colour to everything that happens.
To have suffered oneself makes one much more understanding of others' suffering.
It is of the nature of Reason to perceive things under a certain species of eternity.
What is true may sometimes seem unlike truth.
Beauty is the harmony of chance and the good.
One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.
The true fruit of nature can only be plucked with a delicate hand not bribed by any earthly reward, and a fluttering heart. No hired man can help us to gather this crop.
Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.
There are only two remedies for the suffering of the soul: hope and patience.
It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.
All human acts involve more chance than decision.
Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.
Every artist was first an amateur.
No one can do anything for the happiness of others if he cannot be happy himself.
What is not abandoned is never completely lost.
He who plays with life Never gets ahead.
Of all the sciences needful for men, the chief one is the knowledge of how to live, doing as little harm as possible; and of all arts, the most important is that which teaches how to avoid evil, and how to produce good with the least violence.
Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.
Most teachers waste their time by asking questions which are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning has for its purpose to discover what the pupil knows or is capable of knowing.
The sum of behaviour is to retain a man's dignity without intruding upon the liberty of others.
And pines with thirst amidst a sea of waves.
Find quotes in french, in german, or in latin. Click on the translation icon.
