Quote collection
82 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way."
"If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud."
"I would rather die of passion than of boredom."
"Man's highest duty is to protect animals from cruelty."
"Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest."
"Nothing develops intelligence like travel."
"Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it."
"The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men."
"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
"Did science promise happiness? I do not believe it. It promised truth, and the question is to know if we will ever make happiness with truth."
"I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul."
"Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them."
"If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow."
"The only basis for living is believing in life, loving it, and applying the whole force of one's intellect to know it better."
"Oh, that's typical of you modern young men; you've nibbled at science and it's made you ill, because you've not been able to satisfy that old craving for the absolute that you absorbed in your nurseries. You'd like science to give you all the answers at one go, whereas we're only just beginning to understand it, and it'll probably never be anything but an eternal quest. And so you repudiate science, you fall back on religion, and religion won't have you any more. Then you relapse into pessimism...Yes, it's the disease of our age, of the end of the century: you're all inverted Werthers."
"Respectable people... What bastards!"
"The road to Lourdes is littered with crutches, but not one wooden leg."
"There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman."
"A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy."
"A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure."