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 u….

A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry..

People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them..

Ah! si l'on o" tait les chime' res aux hommes, quel plaisir leur resterait? Oh! If man were robbed of his fantasies, what pleasure would be left hi….

It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes..

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 Par….

A man finds no sweeter voice in all the world than that which chants his praise..

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 ….

I detest war; it ruins conversation.

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..

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

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….

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 p….

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 ….

If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it..

Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood..

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 thi….

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 insignifican….

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

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 r….

Les vrais philosophes sont comme les e le phants, qui en marchant ne posent jamais le second pied a' terre que le premier ne soit bien affermi. T….