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 will kill both; and a German will kill herself.
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.
It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.
A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see.
To be happy, one must have a good stomach and a bad heart.
It takes time to ruin a world, but time is all it takes.
An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.
People almost always do great things without knowing how to do them, and are quite surprised to have done them.
It is high time for me to depart, for at my age I now begin to see things as they really are.
There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.
Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.
Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.
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.
We must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.
Modesty in women has two special advantages,--it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.
If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.
I have lived one hundred years; and I die with the consolation of never having thrown the slightest ridicule upon the smallest virtue.
Neatness is a crowning grace of womanhood.
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.
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!
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.
I hate war, for it spoils conversation.
A philospher sees the Earth as a large planet, travelling through the heavens, covered with fools
I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.
