23 Quotes by Hippolyte Taine

Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross.

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.

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

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

After the collection of facts, the search for causes.

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

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

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

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