The more I study the things of the mind the more mathematical I find them. In them as in mathematics it is a question of quantities; they must be tre…

- Hippolyte Taine

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

Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality fro…

- Hippolyte Taine

The search for causes must come after the collection of facts.

- Hippolyte Taine

Amid this vast and overwhelming space and in these boundless solar archipelagoes, how small is our own sphere, and the earth, what a grain of sand!

- Hippolyte Taine

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

- Hippolyte Taine

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

- 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…

- Hippolyte Taine

Four varieties in society: lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.

- Hippolyte Taine