Modesty in women has two special advantages,–it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLEIf I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open it.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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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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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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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Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
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Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
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A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools
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A well-cultivated mind is, so to speak, made up of all the minds of preceding ages; it is only one single mind which has been educated during all this time.
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I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.
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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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Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
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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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As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.
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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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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.
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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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If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.
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A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see.
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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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It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.
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I detest war; it ruins conversation
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I hate war, for it spoils conversation.
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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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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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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 -
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