Hippolyte Taine Quotes
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine was a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher and the principal exponent of positivism in nineteenth-century French humanistic scholarship. After early controversies over his rationalist philosophical views, he produced his celebrated History of English Literature, On Intelligence, and the six-volume Origins of Contemporary France. The quotes below are attributed to Hippolyte Taine, organized by topic.
Browse Hippolyte Taine by topic
Hippolyte Taine on God
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“Napoleon's Views of Religion " (1891)”
Napoleon , far more Italian than French, Italian by race, by instinct, imagination, and souvenir, considers in his plan the future of Italy, and, on casting up the final accounts of his reign, we find that the net profit is for Italy and the net loss is for France.
Hippolyte Taine on Knowledge
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Attributed to Hippolyte Taine:
“The historian must approach human facts with the methods of natural science.”
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“J'ai beaucoup étudié les philosophes et les chats. La sagesse des chats est infiniment supérieure .”
Translation: I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior. | Epigraph for his book, Vie et opinions philosophiques d'un chat (1858). Paris: Rivages poche/Petit bibliothèque, 2014, back cover. -
“Translation: I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.”
J'ai beaucoup étudié les philosophes et les chats. La sagesse des chats est infiniment supérieure . -
“Epigraph for his book, Vie et opinions philosophiques d'un chat (1858). Paris: Rivages poche/Petit bibliothèque, 2014, back cover.”
J'ai beaucoup étudié les philosophes et les chats. La sagesse des chats est infiniment supérieure . -
“The production of a work of art is determined by the material and intellectual climate in which a man lives and dies.”
Philosophy of Art (1865) -
“Philosophy of Art (1865)”
The production of a work of art is determined by the material and intellectual climate in which a man lives and dies. -
“One puts in the hands of each adult a ballot, but on the back of each soldier a knapsack: with what promises of massacre and bankruptcy for the Twentieth Century, with what exasperation of ill will and distrust, with what loss of wholesome effort, by what a perversion of productive discoveries, accompanied by what an improvement in the means of destruction, by what recoil toward the inferior and u”
Origines de la France contemporaine , cited in Hoffman Nickerson, The Armed Horde (1940)
Hippolyte Taine on Love
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“[Concerning the love La Fontaine felt for animals ] He follows their emotions, he represents their reasonings, he becomes tender, he becomes gay, he participates in their feelings. The fact is, he lived in them. […] The animals contain all the materials of man-sensations, judgments, images.”
La Fontaine et ses Fables (1853–1861), Hachette, 1911, p. 166 and 107; as quoted in Matthieu Ricard , A Plea for the Animals , trans. Sherab Chödzin Kohn, Shambhala Publications, 2016, p. 102.
Hippolyte Taine on Mind
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Attributed to Hippolyte Taine:
“What we call genius is the convergence of many ordinary forces.”
Hippolyte Taine on Politics
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Attributed to Hippolyte Taine:
“Race, milieu, and moment determine the form of every cultural product.”
Hippolyte Taine on Time
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“Napoleon , far more Italian than French, Italian by race, by instinct, imagination, and souvenir, considers in his plan the future of Italy, and, on casting up the final accounts of his reign, we find that the net profit is for Italy and the net loss is for France.”
Napoleon's Views of Religion " (1891)
Hippolyte Taine on Truth
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Attributed to Hippolyte Taine:
“Literature is the documentary expression of an age.”
Hippolyte Taine on Virtue
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Attributed to Hippolyte Taine:
“Vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar.”