Quotes by Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
French author
Alive from: 1657-1757
Category: Writers (Contemporary)
Quotes 1 till 15 of 17.
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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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A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.
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A well cultivated mind is made up of all the minds of preceding ages; it is only the one single mind educated by all previous time.
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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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Fontenelle... said, you remember, to the damsel of eighteen, 'Ah, Madam, would that I were eighty once more.
Source: Letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1 April 1921 -
If I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open 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 beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.
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It is the passions that do and undo everything.
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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.
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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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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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There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
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There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
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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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