Bernard Le Bovier Quotes

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

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. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart. ~ 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

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

Our sun enlightens the planets that belong to him; why may not every fixed star also have planets to which they give light? ~ 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

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

There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

Nature is never so admired as when she is understood. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

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. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

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

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

There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

It is beauty that begins to please, and tenderness that completes the cbarm. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

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. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property. ~ 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

I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

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

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. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

But I've never yet heard anyone say that the Moon was inhabited," she replied, "except as a fantasy and a delusion."

"This may be a fantasy too," I answered. "I don't take sides in these matters except as one does in civil wars, when the uncertainty of what might happen makes one maintain contacts on the opposite side and make arrangements even with the enemy. As for me, although I see the Moon as inhabited, I still live on good terms with those who don't believe it, and I keep myself in a position where I could shift to their opinion honorably if they gained the upper hand. ~ Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

I hate war, for it spoils conversation. ~ 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

Fontenelle was the most civilized man of his time, and indeed of most times. ~ Isaiah Berlin

Modesty in women has two special advantages,
it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness. ~ 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

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

The message would be that the purpose of life is not to eat and drink, watch television and so on. Consuming is not the aim of life. Earning as much money as one can is not the real purpose of life. There is a superior entity, a divinity, le divin as we say in French that is worth thinking about, as are our feelings of wholeness, respect and love, if we can. A society in which these feelings are widespread would be more reasonable than the society the West presently lives in. ~ Bernard D'Espagnat

But you can get arrows from the ~ Bernard Cornwell

Bernard gave his orders in the sharp, rather arrogant and even offensive tone of one who does not feel himself too secure in his superiority. ~ Aldous Huxley

A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first ... A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images invoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed facts ... Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images. ~ Gustave Le Bon

[L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes...

(The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.) ~ Denis Diderot

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Save yourself for my sake. And I will go with you to the end of the world. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Disputing about those already made. I therefore never answered M. Nollet, and the event gave me no cause to repent my silence; for my friend M. le Roy, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, took up my cause and refuted him; my book was translated into the Italian, German, and Latin languages; and the doctrine it contain'd was by degrees universally adopted by the philosophers of Europe, in preference to that of the abbe; so that he lived to see himself the last of his sect, except Monsieur B
, of Paris, his eleve and immediate disciple. What gave my book the more sudden and general celebrity, was the success of one of its proposed experiments, made by Messrs. Dalibard and De Lor at Marly, for drawing ~ Benjamin Franklin

I feel sick.
It's one thing to write for the school newspaper. But New York is on a whole different level. It's a mountain, with a few successful people like Bernard at the top, and a mad of dreamers and strivers like me at the bottom.
And then there are people like Viktor, who aren't afraid to tell you that you've never going to reach that peak. ~ Candace Bushnell

Drat. Daisy pulled back with a frown. She felt guilty that she had enjoyed the kiss so little. And it made her feel even worse when it appeared Llandrindon had enjoyed it quite a lot.
"My dear Miss Bowman," Llandrindon murmured flirtatiously. "You didn't tell me you tasted so sweet."
He reached for her again, and Daisy danced backward with a little yelp. "My lord, control yourself!"
"I cannot." He pursued her slowly around the fountain until they resembled a pair of circling cats. Suddenly he made a dash for her, catching at the sleeve of her gown. Daisy pushed hard at him and twisted away, feeling the soft white muslin rip an inch or two at the shoulder seam.
There was a loud splash and a splatter of water drops.
Daisy stood blinking at the empty spot where Llandrindon had been, and then covered her eyes with her hands as if that would somehow make the entire situation go away.
"My lord?" she asked gingerly. "Did you… did you just fall into the fountain?"
"No," came his sour reply. "You pushed me into the fountain."
"It was entirely unintentional, I assure you." Daisy forced herself to look at him.
Llandrindon rose to his feet, water streaming from his hair and clothes, his coat pockets filled to the brim. It appeared the dip in the fountain had cooled his passions considerably.
He glowered at her in affronted silence. Suddenly his eyes widened, and he reached into one of his water-laden coat pockets. A tiny frog le ~ Lisa Kleypas

His efforts to break out of his essential seclusion were, in fact, a failure, and he knew it. He made no close friend. He copulated with a number of girls, but copulation was not the joy it ought to be. It was a mere relief of need, and he felt ashamed of it afterward because it involved another person as object. Masturbation was preferable, the suitable course for a man like himself. Solitude was his fate; he was trapped by his heredity. She [his mother] had said it: "The work comes first." Rulag had said it calmly, stating fact, powerless to change it, to break out of her cold cell. So it was with him. His heart yearned towards them, the kindly young souls who called him brother, but he could not reach them, nor they him. He was born to be alone, a damned cold intellectual, an egoist.
The work came first, but it went nowhere. Like sex, it ought to have been a pleasure, and it wasn't. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Arthur Braithwaite, known to Louisa and the children as God. And all right, strictly speaking Braithwaite did not exist. Why should he? Not every god has to exist in order to do his job. ~ John Le Carre

. . . all delight being in the present and its past, all truth too, and all fidelity in the word, the flesh, the present moment: for the future, however you look at it, contains only one sure thing and that is death. But the moment is unpredictable. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Security, the chief pretense of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone's head. ~ George Bernard Shaw

There is no greater misery than false joys. ~ Bernard Of Clairvaux

As it is not a settled question, you must clear your mind of the fancy with
which we all begin as children, that the institutions under which we live,
including our legal ways of distributing income and allowing people to own things, are natural, like the weather. They are not. Because they exist everywhere in our little world, we take it for granted that they have always existed and must always exist, and that they are self-acting. That is a dangerous mistake. They are in fact transient makeshifts; and many of them would not be obeyed, even by well-meaning people, if there were not a policeman within call and a prison within reach. They are being changed continually by Parliament, because we are never satisfied with them.... At the elections some candidates get votes by promising to make new laws or to get rid of old ones, and others by promising to keep things just as they are. This is impossible. Things will not stay as they are.

Changes that nobody ever believed possible take place in a few generations. Children nowadays think that spending nine years in school, oldage and widows' pensions, votes for women, and short-skirted ladies in Parliament or pleading in barristers' wigs in the courts are part of the order of Nature, and always were and ever shall be; but their great-grandmothers would have set down anyone who told them that such things were coming as mad, and anyone who wanted them to come as wicked. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Take care, Tenar," he said. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Passion in every word I wrote, passion in every single thought. ~ Bernard Jan

I have late-stage Lyme disease. I was misdiagnosed for many, many years and told I had lupus, MS, Crohn's disease, even degenerative arthritis. And finally in 2010, I got the correct diagnosis, because on the last Le Tigre tour, I was having several seizures a day and at times not being able to brush my own teeth. ~ Kathleen Hanna

He who bears the brand of Cain shall rule the earth. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Spying is waiting. ~ John Le Carre

They say God appeared in history and used it for his purposes, but if that was so he had no pity for men. ~ Bernard Malamud

Society secretly delights in crime, excesses, and violated prohibitions of all sorts. ~ Bernard Tschumi

I know I have gained Christ and through His blessing I have gained the whole world too, but for what I have lost, for what we have all lost, there is no end to the reckoning. We lost everything. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Answer my question, Dresden,' Nicodemus growled. 'What is that?'
'A precaution against getting stuck in deep snow,' I said. 'He's training to be a Saint Bernard.'
'Excuse me?' Nicodemus said.
I mimed covering one of Mouse's ears with my hand and stage-whispered, 'Don't tell him that they don't actually carry kegs of booze on their collars. Break his little heart. ~ Jim Butcher

'Man and Superman,' first performed in 1905, is by common consent one of George Bernard Shaw's greatest and most significant plays, yet hardly anybody performs it today, for the understandable reason that an uncut performance runs for about five hours. ~ Terry Teachout

You will never know how lonely I was without you, but you have to understand that I am only strong when I am certain you are safe. And you are only safe when you are innocent. You can never come to me. Always I will make the journey to you. ~ Georgia Le Carre

Words are taking their revenge. One day, they break the seals of the phylacteries, and come swarming out like snakes. Another day, they spurt from the labels of the bottles that had held them prisoner, and spread through the black sky with their pterodactyl-like jaws thrust forward like a saw-blade knife. They sweep straight ahead, and as they kill their masters their cries of vengeance can be heard. ~ J M G Le Clezio

Le mal de vivre, 'the pain of life.' Qu'll faut bien vivre ... 'that we must live with, or endure.' Vaille que vivre, this is difficult but it is something like 'we must live the life we have. We must soldier on. ~ Ruth Ozeki

You cannot command love, Lady, only beauty or lust does that. Do you want the world to be fair? Then just imagine a world with no kings, no queens, no lords, no passion and no magic. You would want to live in such a dull world? ~ Bernard Cornwell

Would you buy potato chips that listed potato by-product or potato digest as an ingredient ~ Michelle T. Bernard

I can never get used to the fact, though I know it, that women are born cynics. Men have to learn cynicism. Infant girls could teach it to them. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I can understand better than most the contradiction between the idealistic civilisation and religious morals of Europe and what they did with the slaves, because the root of the evil is only two generations away from me. Maybe this has fed my need to fight against the abuses of modern civilisation. ~ J M G Le Clezio

Education can and should do much influence social, moral and intellectual discovery by stimulating critical attitudes of thought in the young ~ George Bernard Shaw

I've always had difficulties with female characters. ~ John Le Carre

It is not the men who are in command of the bulldozers. It is the bulldozer who invented men, and then, since they failed to interest it, obliterated them with its muscular arm. ~ Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

Races and nations are thus ever ready to believe the worst of one another. ~ Richard Le Gallienne

When I designed my loft, I literally framed the World Trade Center as a picture postcard I could see from my bed. I no longer have that image, and I mourn it. ~ Bernard Tschumi

It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing ... It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing. ~ George Bernard Shaw