If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLEIn 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.
More Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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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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To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
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Our sun enlightens the planets that belong to him; why may not every fixed star also have planets to which they give light?
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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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Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
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I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
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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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A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools
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There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
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It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
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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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Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
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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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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.
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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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Modesty in women has two special advantages,–it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.
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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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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.
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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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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
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I detest war; it ruins conversation
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE -
I hate war, for it spoils conversation.
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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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE