To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLETruth comes home to the mind so naturally, that when we learn it for the first time, it seems as though we did no more than recall it to our memory.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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I hate war, for it spoils conversation.
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To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.
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A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.
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A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools
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A man finds no sweeter voice in all the world than that which chants his praise.
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I have lived one hundred years; and I die with the consolation of never having thrown the slightest ridicule upon the smallest virtue.
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Our sun enlightens the planets that belong to him; why may not every fixed star also have planets to which they give light?
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Nothing can be more destructive to ambition, and the passion for conquest, than the true system of astronomy. What a poor thing is even the whole globe in comparison of the infinite extent of nature!
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Mathematicians are like lovers. Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another.
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I detest war; it ruins conversation
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It is the passions that do and undo everything.
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We must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.
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A well-cultivated mind is, so to speak, made up of all the minds of preceding ages; it is only one single mind which has been educated during all this time.
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Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
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As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.
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Let us be well assured of the Matter of Fact, before we trouble our selves with enquiring into the Cause. It is true, that this Method is too slow for the greatest part of Mankind, who run naturally to the Cause, and pass over the Truth of the Matter of Fact.
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Modesty in women has two special advantages,–it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.
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Behold a universe so immense that I am lost in it. I no longer know where I am. I am just nothing at all. Our world is terrifying in its insignificance.
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A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see.
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Ah! si l’on o” tait les chime’ res aux hommes, quel plaisir leur resterait? Oh! If man were robbed of his fantasies, what pleasure would be left him?
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I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
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Since the princes take the Earth for their own, it’s fair that the philosophers reserve the sky for themselves and rule there, but they should never permit the entry of others.
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There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
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They will have the World to be in Large, what a Watch is in Small; which is very regular, and depends only upon the just disposing of the several Parts of the Movement.
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It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
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The judgment may be compared to a clock or watch, where the most ordinary machine is sufficient to tell the hours; but the most elaborate alone can point out the minutes and seconds, and distinguish the smallest differences of time.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE