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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.

Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

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If I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open it.
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We must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.
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It is the passions that do and undo everything.
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I have lived one hundred years and I die with the consolation of never having thrown the slightest ridicule upon the smallest virtue.
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People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.
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It is high time for me to depart, for at my age I now begin to see things as they really are.
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To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
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It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
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Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
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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.
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Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
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A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see.
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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.
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An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
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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.
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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.
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A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools
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Modesty in women has two special advantages,--it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.
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I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist.
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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.
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