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Be not troubled by the wanderings of your imagination which you cannot restrain. How often do we wander through the fear of wandering and the regret that we have done so. What would you say of a traveler who, instead of constantly advancing in his journey, should employ his time in anticipating the falls he might suffer, or in weeping over the place where one had happened?

— François Fénelon

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More quotes by François Fénelon

All the human kind is but one family, dispersed over the face of the whole earth; all men are brothers, and ought to love each other as such.

Les aventures de Télémaque (1699)

The good historian is not for any time or any country: while he loves his fatherland, he never flatters it in anything.

In general, those who govern children forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

The presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Let us endeavor to commence every enterprise with a pure view to the glory of God, continue it without distraction, and finish it without impatience.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

Friedrich Schiller On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: François Fénelon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.