Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLELes vrais philosophes sont comme les e le phants, qui en marchant ne posent jamais le second pied a’ terre que le premier ne soit bien affermi. True philosophers are like elephants, who when walking never placetheir second footontheground untilthefirst is steady.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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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?
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
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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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Women react differently: a French woman who sees herself betrayed by her husband will kill his mistress; an Italian will kill her husband; a Spaniard will kill both; and a German will kill herself.
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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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A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
Modesty in women has two special advantages,–it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.
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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
A man finds no sweeter voice in all the world than that which chants his praise.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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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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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An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
Truth 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.
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I hate war, for it spoils conversation.
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I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.
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Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
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People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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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It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE