I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish hypothesis or other. In such circumstances, you do not choose your own thoughts. They overcome you.
When science has sent forth her fiat – it is only to hear and obey.
It must be that a man who shuts himself up between four walls must lose the faculty of associating ideas and words.
While there is life there is hope.
While his heart still beats, while his flesh still moves, I cannot accept that a being endowed with will-power can give in to despair.
We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.
That science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.
Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.
Man’s constitution is so peculiar that his health is purely a negative matter. No sooner is the rage of hunger appeased than it becomes difficult to comprehend the meaning of starvation. It is only when you suffer that you really understand.
Man is so constituted that health is a purely negative state. Hunger once satisfied, it is difficult for a man to imagine the horrors of starvation; they cannot be understood without being felt.
It is certain that the inanimate objects by which you are surrounded have a direct action on the brain.
How many persons condemned to the horrors of solitary confinement have gone mad – simply because the thinking faculties have lain dormant!