It is the passions that do and undo everything.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLENature 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.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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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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I hate war, for it spoils conversation.
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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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If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.
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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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It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
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There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
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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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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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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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Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
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An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
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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 takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE