It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLEAh! 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?
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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I hate war, for it spoils conversation.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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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I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
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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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There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
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Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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 -
We must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
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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 -
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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A man finds no sweeter voice in all the world than that which chants his praise.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
I detest war; it ruins conversation
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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 -
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 FONTENELLE -
It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
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If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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 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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As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.
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Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE