As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLEOur sun enlightens the planets that belong to him; why may not every fixed star also have planets to which they give light?
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.
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I detest war; it ruins conversation
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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 -
I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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.
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?
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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.
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.
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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.
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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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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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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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