A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLELes 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.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.
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Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
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Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
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It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
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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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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 man finds no sweeter voice in all the world than that which chants his praise.
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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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Modesty in women has two special advantages,–it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.
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It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
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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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People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.
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It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.
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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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There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE