“God grant that by my persevering labours I may bring a little stone to the frail and ill-assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep mysteries of Life and Death where all our intellects have so lamentably failed.”

— Louis Pasteur, The Life of Pasteur (1902), p. 114

About Louis Pasteur

1822 – 1895

French chemist and microbiologist who developed pasteurization and helped establish the germ theory of disease.

“Chance favors only the prepared mind.”

“In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind.”

“There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science.”

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

“Ye are better than all the ballads that ever were sung or said; for ye are living poems, and all the rest are dead.”

“Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; thus unlamented let me die; steal from the world, and not a stone tell where I lie.”

“Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.”

“Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.”

“The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations.”