A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains. — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
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. — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
There are four varieties in society — the lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest. — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
The more I study the things of the mind the more mathematical I find them. In them as in mathematics it is a question… — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
Four varieties in society: lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest. — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
History is nothing but a problem of mechanics applied to psychology. — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
“Not only does the State do the work badly on a domain not its own, bunglingly, at greater cost, and with less fruit than… — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
For thirty centuries, from her sacred seat the cat looked down, and crouching at her feet, beheld the race of conquering Pharaohs kneel. — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
We study ourselves three weeks, we love each other three months, we squabble three years, we tolerate each other thirty years, and then the… — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
Man may be considered as a superior species of animal that produces philosophies and poems in about the same way a silkworm produces their… — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
In the stormy current of life characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another… — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the… — Hippolyte Taine Copy Share Image
