To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Topics: Happiness
It is the passions of men that both do and undo everything.—They are the winds that are necessary to put every thing in motion, though they often cause storms.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Topics: Passion
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
It is the passions that do and undo everything.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Topics: Passion
The magnificent and the ridiculous are so close that they touch.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Men of all ages have the same inclinations over which reason exercises no control. Thus wherever men are found there are follies, aye, and the same follies.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Topics: Truth
There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Topics: Understanding
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
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
Topics: The Body
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
Topics: Originality, The Mind, Mind
Leibnitz has obtained this fruit from his great reading, that he has a mind better exercised for receiving all sorts of ideas, more susceptible of all forms, more accessible to that which is new and even opposed to him, more indulgent to human weakness, more disposed to favorable interpretations, and more industrious to find them.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Topics: Reading
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
Topics: Pleasure
A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Topics: Happiness
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
Topics: Thoughts, Thought, Thinking
Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
—Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Topics: The Future, Tomorrow
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Joseph Joubert French Essayist
- Pierre Corneille French Playwright
- Alphonse de Lamartine French Poet, Politician, Historian
- Michel de Montaigne French Essayist
- Victor Hugo French Novelist
- Gustave Flaubert French Novelist
- Marquis de Sade French Writer
- Ken Kesey American Novelist
- Jorge Luis Borges Argentine Writer
- Giacomo Leopardi Italian Poet
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