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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.

Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Lover Math Principles
I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Regret Silence World
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 FONTENELLE

Aux Fantasy Hommes Men
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.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Knowing Pretension Speak
I hate war, for it spoils conversation.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Conversation Hate War
It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Happiness Obstacles
People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Done Knowing People
There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Art Three Understanding
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
Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
BERNARD LE BOVIER DE FONTENELLE

Grace Neatness Womanhood
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
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
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
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
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

Differences Ordinary Watches