45 Quotes by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.

Hemmeligheten med lykken er å være en god venn med seg selv.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

التاريخ ليس سوى كذبة متفق عليها !(نابليون بونابرت) What is history but a fable agreed upon.

Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.

It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.

We must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.

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.

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!