Francois Fenelon Mind Quotations

Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.

The best use one can make of his mind is to distrust it.

No human power can force the intrenchments of the human mind: compulsion never persuades; it only makes hypocrites.

Violent excitement exhausts the mind and leaves it withered and sterile.

We must avoid fastidiousness; neatness, when it is moderate, is a virtue; but when it is carried to an extreme, it narrows the mind.

I had often heard Mentor say, that the voluptuous were never brave, and I now found by experience that it was true; for the Cyprians whose jollity had been so extravagant and tumultuous, now sunk under a sense of their danger and wept like women. I heard nothing but the screams of terror and the wailings of hopeless distress. Some lamented the loss of pleasures that were never to return; but none had presence of mind either to undertake or direct the navigation of the menaced vessel.

There is no real elevation of mind in a contempt of little things; it is, on the contrary, from too narrow views that we consider those things of little importance which have in fact such extensive consequences.