black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Happiness Obstacles
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

Elephants Philosopher Steady
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

Believe Busy Philosopher
To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Happiness Heart Stomach
If I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open it.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Carefully Hands Open Thinking
People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Done Knowing People
There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Neighbor Ridicule Ridiculous
I detest war; it ruins conversation
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Political Ruin War
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

Knowing Pretension Speak
An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Age Educated Mind
I have lived one hundred years; and I die with the consolation of never having thrown the slightest ridicule upon the smallest virtue.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Hundred Virtue Years
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

Husband Italian Mistress Woman
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

Feet Land Pleasure
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

Lover Math Principles
There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Art Three Understanding
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

Dupes Secret Usual