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- Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle: French author
Quotes 1 till 18 of 18.
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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.
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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There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.
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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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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.
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We have already begun to fly; several persons, here and there, have found the secret to fitting wings to themselves, of setting them in motion, so that they are held up in the air and are carried across streams.... The art of flying is only just being born; it will be perfected, and some day we will go as far as the moon.
Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondes Habite
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