Hippolyte Taine Quotes

His tongue is by turns a sponge, a brush, a comb. He cleans himself, he smooths himself, he knows what is proper.

I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.

The production of a work of art is determined by the material and intellectual climate in which a man lives and dies.

History is nothing but a problem of mechanics applied to psychology.

For thirty centuries, from her sacred seat the cat looked down, and crouching at her feet, beheld the race of conquering Pharaohs kneel.

There are four varieties in society - the lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.

I wish to reproduce things as they are or as they would be even if I myself did not exist.

There are four types of men in the world: lovers, opportunists, lookers-on, and imbeciles. The happiest are the imbeciles.

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.

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.

After the collection of facts, the search for causes.

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!