Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle Quotes
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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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I detest war; it ruins conversation.
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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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A man finds no sweeter voice in all the world than that which chants his praise.
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I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
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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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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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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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True philosophers are like elephants, who when walking never placetheir second footontheground untilthefirst is steady.
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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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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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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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Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
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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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Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
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Women react differently: a French woman who sees herself betrayed by her husband will kill his mistress; an Italian will kill her husband; a Spaniard will kill both; and a German will kill herself.
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It is the passions that do and undo everything.
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An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
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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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Nothing can be more destructive to ambition, and the passion for conquest, than the true system of astronomy. What a poor thing is even the whole globe in comparison of the infinite extent of nature!
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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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If I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open it.