The blind man can go through the whole world without noticing anything.
Happy is the people whose annals do not appear in the history books.
He who has done nothing knows nothing.
The three basic elements of contemporary civilization are: Gunpowder, Printing and Protestantism.
Hundreds can endure hardship, but only a few can endure prosperity.
A life well described is as hard to find as a life well lived.
Man need not complain of the times in which he lives; it doesn't solve anything with it. Times are bad: that's why man exists - to make them better.
A man cannot be incorrigibly evil if he has laughed heartily at least once in his life.
Man lives only with hope. Basically, hope is his only asset.
Economics is an ominous science.
I believe that respect for heroes, which manifests itself in different ways in different eras, is the soul of social relations between people, and that the manner of expression of this respect serves as a measure of the normality or abnormality of the relations prevailing in the world.
I don't even pretend to understand the Universe; he is much bigger than me...
I don't believe in the collective wisdom of a bunch of ignoramuses.
Without a blind faith in abstract perfection it is impossible to take a single step towards actual perfection. Only by believing the intangible good can we approach the tangible good.
A powerless enemy is our best friend; an envious friend is our worst enemy.
In the field of morality, movement is not based only on the pleasure of moving, there must also be a goal: to deny the possibility of reaching perfection, that is, to reach the goal, is to make movement impossible.
There are men who form their heart with the help of reason, and others with the help of the heart, who form their reason: the latter succeed more than the former, because there is more reason in a feeling than feelings in reason.
There is nothing easier than to love those you love, to be able to love a little those you don't.
Nothing exhausts more, nothing increases cowardice so much as a mad hope.
Above all, you owe it to your country and your friends to tell the truth.
I prefer to scourge my country, to grieve and humiliate it, but in no case to deceive it.
Without women, the beginning of life would lack support, the middle of pleasure, and the end of comfort.
A stingy man is the richest of all, and the poorest is the miser.
Most of the works written in our time give us the impression that they were hatched one day from the pages of previously read books.
Marriage is far too perfect a state for an imperfect man.
Marriage follows love as smoke follows fire.
It would be very well if men knew how to combine such opposite properties as love of virtue and indifference to public opinion, zeal for work and indifference to fame.
Nowadays a portrait is painted in seven minutes, drawing is taught in three days, English is taught in forty days, eight languages are taught simultaneously with the help of a few engravings depicting various objects and their names in these eight languages . In short, if it were possible to unite all the pleasures, feelings, and thoughts, which at present require a lifetime, and cram into one day we would probably do that too. They would put a pill in your mouth and say, "Swallow it and wipe it out of here!".
In the last years of her life, Fontenelle regretted not marrying; he forgot that he had lived ninety-five years without any care.
In serious situations, people show themselves as they should show themselves; and in trifles - as they are.