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Admiration
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The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.
-Jean Rostand
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Age
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A man is not old as long as he is seeking something.
-Jean Rostand
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Agreement
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It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not sure enough of their souls.
-Jean Rostand
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Assumptions
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One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.
-Jean Rostand
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Atheism
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The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.
-Jean Rostand
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Attachment
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One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.
-Jean Rostand
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Beauty
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Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.
-Jean Rostand
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Belief
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The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.
-Jean Rostand
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Criticism
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Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.
-Jean Rostand
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Fame
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Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt...
-Jean Rostand
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Future, The
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There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.
-Jean Rostand
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God
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God, that dumping ground of our dreams.
-Jean Rostand
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God, that checkroom of our dreams.
-Jean Rostand
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Government
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I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.
-Jean Rostand
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Greatness & Great Things
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Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.
-Jean Rostand
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Hate
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To hate fatigues.
-Jean Rostand
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Humility
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We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.
-Jean Rostand
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Idealism
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The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.
-Jean Rostand
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Ideas
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To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.
-Jean Rostand, Carnets d'un Biologiste (repr. in The Substance of Man, 1962; p. 181).
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Identity
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I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.
-Jean Rostand
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Judging, Judgment
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To say of men that they are bad is to say they are worse than we think we are, or worse than the ideal man whose image we have built up on the basis of a certain few.
-Jean Rostand
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Maturity
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To be adult is to be alone.
-Jean Rostand
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Mistakes
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It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.
-Jean Rostand
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Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that one could regret their not ranking among the achievements of the human mind.
-Jean Rostand
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Opinion
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It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed.
-Jean Rostand
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Books by and about Jean Rostand