Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle quotes

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)
It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
It was to little purpose to excuse the matter, by saying, that the badness of the Verses was a kind of Testimony that they were made by a God, who nobly scorn'd to be tyed up to rules and to be confined to the Beauty of a Style.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
It is very strange indeed that Poetry should be elder Brother to Prose... but it is very probable... precepts... were shap'd into measured lines, that they might be the more easily remembred.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
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.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
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
An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
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)
It is high time for me to depart, for at my age I now begin to see things as they really are.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
We must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
I have lived one hundred years; and I die with the consolation of never having thrown the slightest ridicule upon the smallest virtue.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
I hate war, for it spoils conversation.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
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
It is the passions that do and undo everything. (Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle)
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
I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle
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
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