A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLETo despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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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.
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If I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open it.
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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.
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To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
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Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
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A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.
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I detest war; it ruins conversation
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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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People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.
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Since the princes take the Earth for their own, it’s fair that the philosophers reserve the sky for themselves and rule there, but they should never permit the entry of others.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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