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 FONTENELLEIt takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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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Les 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.
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Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
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Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
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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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A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see.
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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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It is the passions that do and undo everything.
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I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.
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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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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE