As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLEThere is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
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A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools
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Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
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Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
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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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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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Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
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It is the passions that do and undo everything.
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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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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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There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
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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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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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I hate war, for it spoils conversation.
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To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
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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 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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A man finds no sweeter voice in all the world than that which chants his praise.
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It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.
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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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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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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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An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
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If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.
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There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE