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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLEThere is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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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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Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
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I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
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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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It is the passions that do and undo everything.
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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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A man finds no sweeter voice in all the world than that which chants his praise.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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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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 -
Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
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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!
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
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Let us be well assured of the Matter of Fact, before we trouble our selves with enquiring into the Cause. It is true, that this Method is too slow for the greatest part of Mankind, who run naturally to the Cause, and pass over the Truth of the Matter of Fact.
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I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.
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Modesty in women has two special advantages,–it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.
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There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
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To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
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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.
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I detest war; it ruins conversation
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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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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.
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An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
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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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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 -
It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE