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?
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLEBehold 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.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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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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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It is the passions that do and undo everything.
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Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
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Leibniz never married; he had considered it at the age of fifty; but the person he had in mind asked for time to reflect. This gave Leibniz time to reflect, too, and so he never married.
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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 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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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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As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.
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Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
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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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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An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE