You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.

It's shapely and has served me well

A scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.

This theory [the oxygen theory] is not as I have heard it described, that of the French chemists, it is mine (elle est la mienne); it is a property which I claim from my contemporaries and from posterity.

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.