“People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.”

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!

Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.

Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.

Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.

I have lived one hundred years; and I die with the consolation of never having thrown the slightest ridicule upon the smallest virtue.

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.

A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.

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.

We must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.

As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.

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.

It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.

Our sun enlightens the planets that belong to him; why may not every fixed star also have planets to which they give light?

A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.

A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools

I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.

Accept periods of suffering with gratitude, knowing that suffering can teach you very important lessons.

I don’t know if it’s my music, my lyrics, my sound and knowing the music business the way I do – all I can say is, my career has lasted way longer than I expected.

Victory becomes, to some degree, a state of mind. Knowing ourselves superior to the anxieties, troubles, and worries which obsess us, we are superior to them.

Knowledge is knowing a fact, wisdom is knowing what to do with that fact.

Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails.

Dogs aren’t born knowing what or what not to do; they only learn like children.

Study the rules so that you won’t beat yourself by not knowing something.

The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.