Quotes by Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

Quotes 1 till 15 of 17.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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  If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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  A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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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.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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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

  

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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

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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  If I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open it.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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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

  

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  It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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  It is the passions that do and undo everything.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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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.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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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!

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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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.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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  There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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  There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.

• Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

  

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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.