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 FONTENELLEAs astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
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 -
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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It is the passions that do and undo everything.
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Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
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There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
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 -
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.
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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
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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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A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools
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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE