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.Collection: Husband
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.Collection: Knowledge
It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.Collection: Happiness
A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see.Collection: Believe
It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.Collection: Liberty
To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.Collection: Happiness
An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.Collection: Mind
People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.Collection: Knowing
It is high time for me to depart, for at my age I now begin to see things as they really are.Collection: Age
There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.Collection: Art
Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.Collection: Future
Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.Collection: Nature
A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.Collection: Elephants
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.Collection: Time
We must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.Collection: Land
Modesty in women has two special advantages,--it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.Collection: Two
If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.Collection: Funny
I have lived one hundred years; and I die with the consolation of never having thrown the slightest ridicule upon the smallest virtue.Collection: Years
Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.Collection: Grace
Mathematicians are like lovers. Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another.Collection: Math
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!Collection: Passion
Let us be well assured of the Matter of Fact, before we trouble our selves with enquiring into the Cause. It is true, that this Method is too slow for the greatest part of Mankind, who run naturally to the Cause, and pass over the Truth of the Matter of Fact.Collection: Running
I hate war, for it spoils conversation.Collection: Hate
A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with foolsCollection: Heaven
I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.Collection: Regret
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.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Knowing
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.Collection: Inspirational
I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.Collection: Certain
I detest war; it ruins conversationCollection: War
It is the passions that do and undo everything.Collection: Passion
It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm.Collection: Beauty
If I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open it.Collection: Thinking
There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.Collection: Ridiculous
Our sun enlightens the planets that belong to him; why may not every fixed star also have planets to which they give light?Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Secret
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?Collection: Men
The Art of Flying is but newly invented, twill improve by degrees, and in time grow perfect; then we may fly as far as the Moon.Collection: Art
L'univers?je l'en estime plus depuis que je sais qu'il ressemble a' une montre; il est surprenant que l'ordre de la nature, tout admirable qu'il est, ne roule que sur des choses si simples. I have come to esteem the universe more now that I know it resembles a watch; it is surprising that the order of nature, as admirable as it is, only runs on such simple things.Collection: Running
As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.Collection: Daughter
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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Sky
A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.Collection: Work
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.Collection: Differences
A man finds no sweeter voice in all the world than that which chants his praise.Collection: Men
Les vrais philosophes sont comme les e le phants, qui en marchant ne posent jamais le second pied a' terre que le premier ne soit bien affermi. True philosophers are like elephants, who when walking never placetheir second footontheground untilthefirst is steady.Collection: Elephants