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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLEWe must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
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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.
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It is the passions that do and undo everything.
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To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
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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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I detest war; it ruins conversation
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A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools
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The Art of Flying is but newly invented, twill improve by degrees, and in time grow perfect; then we may fly as far as the Moon.
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Leibniz never married; he had considered it at the age of fifty; but the person he had in mind asked for time to reflect. This gave Leibniz time to reflect, too, and so he never married.
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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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A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.
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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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In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we shall die as usual.
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It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
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People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.
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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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If I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open it.
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Nature intends that, at fixed periods, men should succeed each other by the instrumentality of death. We shall never outwit Nature; we shall die as usual.
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It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.
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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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There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
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It is high time for me to depart, for at my age I now begin to see things as they really are.
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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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I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
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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?
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE