Hippolyte Taine Quotes
There are four types of men in the world: lovers, opportunists, lookers-on, and imbeciles. The happiest are the imbeciles.
I've met many thinkers and many cats, but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
For thirty centuries, from her sacred seat the cat looked down, and crouching at her feet, beheld the race of conquering Pharaohs kneel.
We study ourselves three weeks, we love each other three months, we squabble three years, we tolerate each other thirty years, and then the children start all over again.
The production of a work of art is determined by the material and intellectual climate in which a man lives and dies.
Amid this vast and overwhelming space and in these boundless solar archipelagoes, how small is our own sphere, and the earth, what a grain of sand!
Four varieties in society: lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.
His tongue is by turns a sponge, a brush, a comb. He cleans himself, he smooths himself, he knows what is proper.
To have a true idea of man or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once.
Man may be considered as a superior species of animal that produces philosophies and poems in about the same way a silkworm produces their cocoons and bees their hives.
I wish to reproduce things as they are or as they would be even if I myself did not exist.
A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.
There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races. To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety.
In the stormy current of life characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another maintain us on the surface.
There are four varieties in society the lovers the ambitious observers and fools. The fools are the happiest.
I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.