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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

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

Feet Land Pleasure
It is high time for me to depart, for at my age I now begin to see things as they really are.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Age Last Time Words
To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Happiness Heart Stomach
A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Believe Busy Philosopher
A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Geometry Hands Math Work
I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Certain Difficulty Last Words
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 FONTENELLE

Knowledge Nothing Science World
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

Home Memories Motivational
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Elephants Philosopher Steady
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Death Men Succeed Usual
It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Happiness Obstacles
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

Dupes Secret Usual
Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Future Knows
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Earth Philosopher Sky
There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Neighbor Ridicule Ridiculous
It is the passions that do and undo everything.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Everything Passion Undo