--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

--- QUOTES [2 / 2 - 106 / 106] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

KEYS (10k)

   1 Voltaire
   1 Mortimer J Adler

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   67 Voltaire

   7 Mark Ravenhill

   2 Robin Sloan

   2 Kate Atkinson

   2 Ernesto Sabato

   2 Anonymous

1:A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but still I loved life. This ridiculous weakness for living is perhaps one of our most fatal tendencies. For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground? Sillier than to feel disgust at one's own existence and yet cling to it? Sillier, in short, than to clasp to our bosom the serpent that devours us until it has gnawed away our heart? ~ Voltaire, Candide ,

2:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey2. The Old Testament3. Aeschylus - Tragedies4. Sophocles - Tragedies5. Herodotus - Histories6. Euripides - Tragedies7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings9. Aristophanes - Comedies10. Plato - Dialogues11. Aristotle - Works12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus13. Euclid - Elements14.Archimedes - Works15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections16. Cicero - Works17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things18. Virgil - Works19. Horace - Works20. Livy - History of Rome21. Ovid - Works22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion26. Ptolemy - Almagest27. Lucian - Works28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties30. The New Testament31. Plotinus - The Enneads32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine33. The Song of Roland34. The Nibelungenlied35. The Saga of Burnt Njal36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres43. Thomas More - Utopia44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy58. John Milton - Works59. Molière - Comedies60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal69. William Congreve - The Way of the World70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets ~ Mortimer J Adler,

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Candide by Voltaire, ~ Louis L Amour

2:"You're a bitter man," said Candide. ~ Voltaire

3:Candide embraced his sheep with transport. ~ Voltaire

4:Candide” never bored anybody except William Wordsworth. ~ Voltaire

5:Cela est bien, repondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin. ~ Voltaire

6:You are very hard of belief," said Candide. "I have lived," said Martin. ~ Voltaire

7:Excellently observed", answered Candide; "but let us cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire

8:All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire

9:You're a bitter man," said Candide. That's because I've lived," said Martin. ~ Voltaire

10:I'm not Candide, nor Dr Pangloss, but we know that faith moves mountains. ~ Daniel Libeskind

11:You lack faith,” said Candide. “It is because,” said Martin, “I have seen the world. ~ Voltaire

12:But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin. ~ Voltaire

13:Candide is one of those books I read when I was young and that I come back to regularly. ~ Mark Ravenhill

14:But then, to what end,” said Candide, “was the world formed?” “To make us mad,” said Martin. “Are ~ Voltaire

15:What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide. "That is because I know what life is," said Martin. ~ Voltaire

16:What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide. "That is because I know what life is," said Martin. ~ Voltaire

17:Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery. ~ Voltaire

18:Voltaire, Candide, trans. Francois-Marie Arouet (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1991), p. 86. 7 ~ Erik Brynjolfsson

19:The guy's life drunk, I think, makes Candide look like a sourpuss. Does he even know that death exists? ~ Jandy Nelson

20:Mais à quelle fin ce monde a-t-il donc été formé ? dit Candide. - Pour nous faire enrager, répondit Martin. ~ Voltaire

21:Jefferson appeared to his enemies as an American version of Candide; Hamilton as an American Machiavelli. ~ Joseph J Ellis

22:It's a book that makes me laugh and think - it would be very hard to like someone who didn't enjoy Candide! ~ Mark Ravenhill

23:What's optimism? said Cacambo. Alas, said Candide, it is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell. ~ Voltaire

24:Oh! what a superior man," said Candide below his breath. "What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him. ~ Voltaire

25:Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony. ~ Lionel Trilling

26:Oh, quel homme supérieur ! disait encore Candide entre ses dents, quel grand génie que ce Pococuranté ! rien ne peut lui plaire. ~ Voltaire

27:Fairest lady,” said Candide, “when a man is in love, jealous, and whipped by the Inquisition, he no longer knows what he's doing. ~ Voltaire

28:But is there not a pleasure," said Candide, "in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties? ~ Voltaire

29:There can be no effect without a cause," modestly answered Candide; "the whole is necessarily concatenated and arranged for the best. ~ Voltaire

30:What is optimism? Alas, it is the mania for pretending that all is right, when in fact everything is wrong. —Voltaire, Candide ~ Stacy Schiff

31:My dear miss," said Candide, "when one is in love, jealous, and has been whipped by the Inquisition, one becomes a stranger to oneself. ~ Voltaire

32:What is this optimism?" said Cacambo. "Alas!" said Candide, "it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong. ~ Voltaire

33:Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst. ~ Voltaire

34:Also, everyone thinks they know Candide - you hear people described as 'Panglossian'. So if Candide appears on a poster, it feels familiar. ~ Mark Ravenhill

35:What's Optimism?' asked Cacambo. 'I'm afraid to say,' said Candide, 'that it's a mania for insisting that all is well when things are going badly. ~ Voltaire

36:Beautiful maiden,” answered Candide, “when a man is in love, is jealous, and has been flogged by the Inquisition, he becomes lost to all reflection. ~ Voltaire

37:Candide listened attentively and believed innocently; for he thought Miss Cunegonde extremely beautiful, though he never had the courage to tell her so. ~ Voltaire

38:after dinner they came and secured Dr.Pangloss, and his pupil Candide, the one for speaking his mind, and the other for listening with an air of approval. ~ Voltaire

39:Candide, terrified, amazed, desperate, all bloody, all palpitating, said to himself: "If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? Well, ~ Voltaire

40:Rereading Candide, I was struck by the link between optimism and the optimal, the idea that we have been placed in this optimal world rather than some other. ~ Mark Ravenhill

41:Said Candide to Cacambo: My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; there is nothing solid but virtue, and the happiness of seeing Cunegonde once more. ~ Voltaire

42:My friend,” said the orator to him, “do you believe the Pope to be the Anti-Christ?” “I have not heard it,” answered Candide; “but whether he be, or whether he not, I want bread. ~ Voltaire

43:For the poetry of a text is largely produced by the fact that the wild chaos of the universe is therein, at one and the same time, expressed and controlled by a rhythm. In Candide both characteristics exist. ~ Voltaire

44:I could see why [Candide] appealed to Charlotte Clingstone. It was a rejection of ambition, a blueprint for her small, perfect, human-scale restaurant-- a safe space set apart from the scrum of the world. ~ Robin Sloan

45:Optimism and happiness are not the same thing, but they are becoming interchangeable, and it seemed to me that Voltaire's Candide gave me a way into something important happening in modern-day culture. ~ Mark Ravenhill

46:Los grandes artistas son personas extrañas que han logrado preservar en el fondo de su alma esa candidez sagrada de la niñez y de los hombres que llamamos primitivos, y por eso provocan la risa de los estúpidos. ~ Ernesto Sabato

47:But is there not a pleasure," said Candide, "in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties?" "That is to say," replied Martin, "that there is some pleasure in having no pleasure. ~ Voltaire

48:Is it true that they always laugh in Paris?” said Candide. “Yes,” said the Abbé, “but it means nothing, for they complain of everything with great fits of laughter; they even do the most detestable things while laughing. ~ Voltaire

49:Translating Candide into tweets has really deepened my appreciation of his writing - it wouldn't work so well with nineteenth-century authors. Every single sentence in Voltaire seems to advance the story, and yet stand alone as a sound-bite. ~ Mark Ravenhill

50:How many plays have been written in France?' Candide asked the abbe. 'Five or six thousand.' 'That's a lot,' said Candide. 'How many of them are good?' 'Fifteen or sixteen,' replied the abbe. 'That's a lot,' said Martin. ~ Voltaire

51:Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?" "Yes, without doubt," said Candide. "Well, then," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same character why should you imagine that men may have changed theirs? ~ Voltaire

52:My passion for gardening may strike some as selfish, or merely an act of resignation in the face of overwhelming problems that beset the world. It is neither. I have found that each garden is just what Voltaire proposed in Candide: a microcosm of a just and beautiful society. ~ Andrew Weil

53:You see," said Candide to Martin, "that crime is sometimes punished. This rogue of a Dutch skipper has met with the fate he deserved." "Yes," said Martin; "but why should the passengers be doomed also to destruction? God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest. ~ Voltaire

54:He had made a vow, a private promise to the world in the long dark watches of the night, that if he did survive then in the great afterward he would always try to be kind, to live a good quiet life. Like Candide, he would cultivate his garden. Quietly. And that would be his redemption. ~ Kate Atkinson

55:It was an observation of Plato, long since, that those are not the best stomachs that reject, without distinction, all sorts of aliments.” “True,” said Candide, “but still there must certainly be a pleasure in criticising everything, and in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties. ~ Voltaire

56:I have not chosen to create a linear story, but a series of different narratives: in the end there are five plays that almost, but don't quite, add up to one play... I start with the story of Candide, being performed as a play within a play, to bring the audience up to speed with the story. ~ Mark Ravenhill

57:Holy Virgin!" cried she, "what will become of us? A man killed in my apartment! If the officers of justice come, we are lost!" "Had not Pangloss been hanged," said Candide, "he would give us good counsel in this emergency, for he was a profound philosopher. Failing him let us consult the old woman. ~ Voltaire

58:Todo niño es un artista que canta, baila, pinta, cuenta historias y construye castillos. Los grandes artistas son personas extrañas que han logrado preservar en el fondo de su alma esa candidez sagrada de la niñez y de los hombres que llamamos primitivos, y por eso provocan la risa de los estúpidos. ~ Ernesto Sabato

59:Candide drew near and saw his benefactor, who rose above the water one moment and was then swallowed up for ever. He was just going to jump after him, but was prevented by the philosopher Pangloss, who[Pg 19] demonstrated to him that the Bay of Lisbon had been made on purpose for the Anabaptist to be drowned. ~ Voltaire

60:Were you ever in France, Mr. Martin?” said Candide. “Yes,” said Martin, “I have been in several provinces. In some one-half of the people are fools, in others they are too cunning; in some they are weak and simple, in others they affect to be witty; in all, the principal occupation is love, the next is slander, and the third is talking nonsense. ~ Voltaire

61:I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?' That is a hard question,' said Candide. ~ Voltaire

62:I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?' That is a hard question,' said Candide. ~ Voltaire

63:Avez-vous jamais été en France, monsieur Martin ? dit Candide. - Oui, dit Martin, j'ai parcouru plusieurs provinces. Il y en a où la moitié des habitants est folle, quelques-unes où l'on est trop rusé, d'autres où l'on est communément assez doux et bête, d'autres où l'on fait le bel esprit ; et dans toutes, la principale occupation est l'amour, la seconde de médire, et la troisième de dire des sottises. ~ Voltaire

64:Do you believe,' said Candide, 'that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?' Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them? ~ Voltaire

65:Instantly they fettered him, and carried him away to the regiment. There he was made to wheel about to the right, and to the left, to draw his rammer, to return his rammer, to present, to fire, to march, and they gave him thirty blows with a cudgel. The next day he did his exercise a little less badly, and he received but twenty blows. The day following they gave him only ten, and he was regarded by his comrades as a prodigy. Candide, ~ Voltaire

66:A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but still I loved life. This ridiculous weakness for living is perhaps one of our most fatal tendencies. For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground? Sillier than to feel disgust at one's own existence and yet cling to it? Sillier, in short, than to clasp to our bosom the serpent that devours us until it has gnawed away our heart? ~ Voltaire, Candide,

67:Who" said Candide, "is that fat pig who was telling me so many bad things about the play at which I wept so much and about the actors who gave me such pleasure?" "He is a living disease," replied the abbé, "who makes his makes his living saying bad things about all plays and all books; he hates anyone who succeeds, as eunuchs hate those who enjoy sex; he is one of those serpents of literature who feed on filth and venom; he is a foliferous pamphleteer... ~ Voltaire

68:Hyper-selectionism has been with us for a long time in various guises; for it represents the late nineteenth century's scientific version of the myth of natural harmony all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds (all structures well designed for a definite purpose in this case). It is, indeed, the vision of foolish Dr. Pangloss, so vividly satirized by Voltaire in Candide the world is not necessarily good, but it is the best we could possibly have. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

69:They docked at Buenos Aires. Cunégonde, Captain Candide, and the old woman went to call on the Governor, Don Fernando d'Ibaraa y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza. This grandee had a pride to match his many names. He spoke to people with the most noble disdain, sticking his nose so far in the air, speaking in such a mercilessly loud voice, adopting so high and mighty a tone, and affecting so haughty a gait, that all who greeted him were also tempted to hit him. ~ Voltaire

70:He had made a vow, a private promise to the world in the long dark watches of the night, that if he did survive then in the great afterward he would always try to be kind, to live a good, quiet life. Like Candide, he would cultivate his garden. quietly. And that would be his redemption. Even if he could add only a feather to the balance it would be some kind of repayment for being spared. When it was all over and the reckoning fell due, it may be that he would be in need of that feather. ~ Kate Atkinson

71:a hundred times by negro pirates, to have a buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fé, to be dissected, to row in the galleys—in short, to go through all the miseries we have undergone, or to stay here and have nothing to do?" "It is a great question," said Candide. This discourse gave rise to new reflections, and Martin especially concluded that man was born to live either in a state of distracting inquietude or of lethargic disgust. ~ Anonymous

72:Tous les événements sont enchaînés dans le meilleur des mondes possibles : car enfin si vous n'aviez pas été chassé d'un beau château à grands coups de pied dans le derrière pour l'amour de mademoiselle Cunégonde, si vous n'aviez pas été mis à l'Inquisition, si vous n'aviez pas donné un bon coup d'épée au baron, si vous n'aviez pas perdu vos moutons du bon pays d'Eldorado, vous ne mangeriez pas ici des cédrats confits et des pistaches. - Cela est bien dit, répondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin. ~ Voltaire

73:All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; after all, if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunegonde, if you hadn't been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn't traveled across America on foot, if you hadn't given a good sword thrust to the baron, if you hadn't lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn't be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios. - That is very well put, said Candide, but we must cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire

74:Kissinger projects a strong impression of a man at home in the world and on top of his brief. But there are a number of occasions when it suits him to pose as a sort of Candide: naive, and ill-prepared for and easily unhorsed by events. No doubt this pose costs him something in point of self-esteem. It is a pose, furthermore, which he often adopts at precisely the time when the record shows him to be knowledgeable, and when knowledge or foreknowledge would also confront him with charges of responsibility or complicity. ~ Christopher Hitchens

75:The abbe of Perigord offered his service to introduce him to her at her own house. Candide, who was brought up in Germany, desired to know what might be the ceremonial used on those occasions, and how a queen of England was treated in France. “There is a necessary distinction to be observed in these matters,” said the abbe. “In a country town we take them to a tavern; here in Paris, they are treated with great respect during their lifetime, provided they are handsome, and when they die we throw their bodies upon a dunghill. ~ Voltaire

76:The quality of life does not depend on happiness alone, but also on what one does to be happy. If one fails to develop goals that give meaning to one's existence, if one does not use the mind to its fullest, then good feelings fulfill just a fraction of the potential we possess. A person who achieves contentment by withdrawing from the world to "cultivate his own garden," like Voltaire's Candide, cannot be said to lead an excellent life. Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

77:I want to know which is worse, to be ravished a hundred times by negro pirates, to have a buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fé, to be dissected, to row in the galleys—in short, to go through all the miseries we have undergone, or to stay here and have nothing to do?" "It is a great question," said Candide. This discourse gave rise to new reflections, and Martin especially concluded that man was born to live either in a state of distracting inquietude or of lethargic disgust. ~ Anonymous

78:My Lady Baroness, who weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, consequently was a person of no small consideration; and then she did the honors of the house with a dignity that commanded universal respect. Her daughter was about seventeen years of age, fresh-colored, comely, plump, and desirable. The Baron's son seemed to be a youth in every respect worthy of the father he sprung from. Pangloss, the preceptor, was the oracle of the family, and little Candide listened to his instructions with all the simplicity natural to his age and disposition. ~ Voltaire

79:How do you handle it when your anger brims over the edge of the pot? You use the shortened version of the Serenity Prayer, which is “Fuck it.” Like Voltaire’s Candide tending his own garden or the British infantry going up the Khyber Pass one bloody foot at a time, you do your job, and you grin and walk through the cannon smoke, and you just keep saying fuck it. You also have faith in your own convictions and never let the naysayers and those who are masters at inculcating self-doubt hold sway in your life. “Fuck it” is not profanity. “Fuck it” is a sonnet. ~ James Lee Burke

80:Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?" "Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?" "Yes, without doubt," said Candide. "Well, then," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same character why should you imagine that men may have changed theirs? ~ Voltaire

81:Do you think,” said Candide, “that mankind always massacred one another as they do now? Were they always guilty of lies, fraud, treachery, ingratitude, inconstancy, envy, ambition, and cruelty? Were they always thieves, fools, cowards, gluttons, drunkards, misers, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, and hypocrites?”   “Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always been accustomed to eat pigeons when they came in their way?”   “Doubtless,” said Candide.   “Well then,” replied Martin, “if hawks have always had the same nature, why should you pretend that mankind change theirs? ~ Voltaire

82:Do you think,” said Candide, “that mankind always massacred one another as they do now? Were they always guilty of lies, fraud, treachery, ingratitude, inconstancy, envy, ambition, and cruelty? Were they always thieves, fools, cowards, gluttons, drunkards, misers, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, and hypocrites?” “Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always been accustomed to eat pigeons when they came in their way?” “Doubtless,” said Candide. “Well then,” replied Martin, “if hawks have always had the same nature, why should you pretend that mankind change theirs? ~ Voltaire

83:There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and cannon made music such as Hell itself had never heard. The cannons first of all laid flat about six thousand men on each side; the muskets swept away from this best of worlds nine or ten thousand ruffians who infested its surface. The bayonet was also a sufficient reason for the death of several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls. Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery. ~ Voltaire

84:One day Cunegonde, while walking near the castle, in a little wood which they called a park, saw between the bushes, Dr. Pangloss giving a lesson in experimental natural philosophy to her mother’s chamber-maid, a little brown wench, very pretty and very docile. As Miss Cunegonde had a great disposition for the sciences, she breathlessly observed the repeated experiments of which she was a witness; she clearly perceived the force of the Doctor’s reasons, the effects, and the causes; she turned back greatly flurried, quite pensive, and filled with the desire to be learned; dreaming that she might well be a sufficient reason for young Candide, and he for her. ~ Voltaire

85:Sir, you think doubtless that all is for the best in the moral and physical world, and that nothing could be otherwise than it is?" said Candide. "I, sir!" answered the scholar, "I know nothing of all that; I find that all goes awry with me; that no one knows either what is his rank, nor what is his condition, what he does nor what he ought to do; and that except supper, which is always gay, and where there appears to be enough concord, all the rest of the time is passed in impertinent quarrels; Jansenist against Molinist, Parliament against the Church, men of letters against men of letters, courtesans against courtesans, financiers against the people, wives against husbands, relatives against relatives—it is eternal war. ~ Voltaire

86:Si les gens d'autrefois paraissent candides, c'est souvent en fonction de la perspective déformante due à une corruption plus ou moins généralisée ; les taxer de naïfs est en somme leur appliquer une loi rétroactive, juridiquement parlant. De même, si tel auteur ancien peut donner une impression de simplicité d'esprit, c'est pour une large part parce qu'il n'avait pas à tenir compte de mille erreurs encore inconnues ni de mille possibilités de mésinterprétation, et aussi, parce que sa dialectique n'avait pas à ressembler à une danse écossaise entre des œufs, étant donné qu'il pouvait se passer largement de nuances ; les mots avaient encore une fraîcheur et une plénitude - ou une magie - qu'il nous est difficile d'imaginer dans le climat d'inflation verbale où nous vivons. ~ Frithjof Schuon

87:He moved on from Anatole France to the eighteenth-century philosophers, though not to Rousseau. Perhaps this was because one side of him - the side easily moved by passion - was too close to Rousseau. Instead, he approached the author of 'Candide', who was closer to another side of him - the cool and richly intellectual side. At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings. Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun - as if he had forgotten about that ancient Greek who plunged to his death in the ocean when his man-made wings were singed by the sun. ~ Ry nosuke Akutagawa

88:Meanwhile, all the travellers whom Candide met in the inns along his route, said to him, "We go to Paris." This general eagerness at length gave him, too, a desire to see this capital; and it was not so very great a détour from the road to Venice. He entered Paris by the suburb of St. Marceau, and fancied that he was in the dirtiest village of Westphalia. Scarcely was Candide arrived at his inn, than he found himself attacked by a slight illness, caused by fatigue. As he had a very large diamond on his finger, and the people of the inn had taken notice of a prodigiously heavy box among his baggage, there were two physicians to attend him, though he had never sent for them, and two devotees who warmed his broths. "I remember," Martin said, "also to have been sick at Paris in my first voyage; I was very poor, thus I had neither friends, devotees, nor doctors, and I recovered. ~ Voltaire

89:Oh! what a superior man," said Candide below his breath. "What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him." After their survey of the library they went down into the garden, where Candide praised its several beauties. "I know of nothing in so bad a taste," said the master. "All you see here is merely trifling. After to-morrow I will have it planted with a nobler design." Well," said Candide to Martin when they had taken their leave, "you will agree that this is the happiest of mortals, for he is above everything he possesses." "But do you not see," answered Martin, "that he is disgusted with all he possesses? Plato observed a long while ago that those stomachs are not the best that reject all sorts of food." "But is there not a pleasure," said Candide, "in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties? ~ Voltaire

90:I found my father asleep in his dining-room armchair, with a blanket over his legs and his favorite book open in his hands--a copy of Voltaire's Candide, which he reread a couple of times a year, the only times I heard him laugh heartily. I observed him: his hair was gray, thinning, and the skin on his face had begun to sag around his cheekbones. I looked at that man whom I had once imagined almost invincible; he now seemed fragile, defeated without knowing it. Perhaps we were both defeated. I leaned over to cover him with the blanket he had been promising to give away to charity for years, and I kissed his forehead, as if by doing so I could protect him from the invisible threads that kept him away from me, from that tiny apartment, and from my memories, as if I believed that with that kiss I could deceive time and convince it to pass us by, to return some other day, some other life. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n

91:Were you ever in France, Mr. Martin?" said Candide. "Yes," said Martin, "I have been in several provinces. In some one-half of the people are fools, in others they are too cunning; in some they are weak and simple, in others they affect to be witty; in all, the principal occupation is love, the next is slander, and the third is talking nonsense." "But, Mr. Martin, have you seen Paris?" "Yes, I have. All these kinds are found there. It is a chaos—a confused multitude, where everybody seeks pleasure and scarcely any one finds it, at least as it appeared to me. I made a short stay there. On my arrival I was robbed of all I had by pickpockets at the fair of St. Germain. I myself was taken for a robber and was imprisoned for eight days, after which I served as corrector of the press to gain the money necessary for my return to Holland on foot. I knew the whole scribbling rabble, the party rabble, the fanatic rabble. It is said that there are very polite people in that city, and I wish to believe it. ~ Voltaire

92:For Paley, a watch is purposeful and thus must have been created by a being with a purpose. A watch needs a watchmaker, just as a world needs a world-maker—God. Yet both Wallace and Paley might have heeded the lesson from Voltaire's Candide (1759), in which Dr. Pangloss, a professor of "metaphysico-theology-cosmolonigology," through reason, logic, and analogy "proved" that this is the best of all possible worlds: '"Tis demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise; for, since everything is made for an end, everything is necessarily for the best end. Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches" (1985, p. 238). The absurdity of this argument was intended on the part of the author, for Voltaire firmly rejected the Panglossian paradigm that all is best in the best of all possible worlds. Nature is not perfectly designed, nor is this the best of all possible worlds. It is simply the world we have, quirky, contingent, and flawed as it may be. ~ Michael Shermer

93:As I was doing this, I was also reading the book that Charlotte Clingstone had selected from Horace's library and left for me, Candide-- her cafe's namesake. It was, unexpectedly, a screwball action comedy. The hapless main character, whose name was Candide, travelled with a band of companions from Europe to the New World and back. Along the way, characters were flogged, ship-wrecked, enslaved and nearly executed several times. There were earthquakes and tsunamis and missing body parts. One of Candide's companions, Pangloss, whose name I recognized from the hundred-dollar adjective he inspired-- I'd never known the etymology-- insisted throughout that all their misfortunes were for the best, for they delivered the companions into situations that seemed, at first, pretty good. Until those situations, too, went to shit. The story concluded on a small farm outside Istanbul, where Candide plunked a hoe into the dirt and declared his intention to retreat from adventure (and suffering) and simply tend his garden. The way the author told it-- the book was written in 1959-- it was clear I was supposed to think Candide had finally discovered something important. ~ Robin Sloan

94:Surely you must be possessed by the devil," said Candide. "He is so deeply concerned in the affairs of this world," answered Martin, "that he may very well be in me, as well as in everybody else; but I own to you that when I cast an eye on this globe, or rather on this little ball, I cannot help thinking that God has abandoned it to some malignant being. I except, always, El Dorado. I scarcely ever knew a city that did not desire the destruction of a neighbouring city, nor a family that did not wish to exterminate some other family. Everywhere the weak execrate the powerful, before whom they cringe; and the powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell. A million regimented assassins, from one extremity of Europe to the other, get their bread by disciplined depredation and murder, for want of more honest employment. Even in those cities which seem to enjoy peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured by more envy, care, and uneasiness than are experienced by a besieged town. Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities. In a word I have seen so much, and experienced so much that I am a Manichean." "There are, however, some things good," said Candide. "That may be," said Martin; "but I know them not. ~ Voltaire

95:Surely you must be possessed by the devil," said Candide. "He is so deeply concerned in the affairs of this world," answered Martin, "that he may very well be in me, as well as in everybody else; but I own to you that when I cast an eye on this globe, or rather on this little ball, I cannot help thinking that God has abandoned it to some malignant being. I except, always, El Dorado. I scarcely ever knew a city that did not desire the destruction of a neighbouring city, nor a family that did not wish to exterminate some other family. Everywhere the weak execrate the powerful, before whom they cringe; and the powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell. A million regimented assassins, from one extremity of Europe to the other, get their bread by disciplined depredation and murder, for want of more honest employment. Even in those cities which seem to enjoy peace, and[Pg 100] where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured by more envy, care, and uneasiness than are experienced by a besieged town. Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities. In a word I have seen so much, and experienced so much that I am a Manichean." "There are, however, some things good," said Candide. "That may be," said Martin; "but I know them not. ~ Voltaire

96:The Count of Monte Cristo, Edgar Allan Poe, Robinson Crusoe, Ivanhoe, Gogol, The Last of the Mohicans, Dickens, Twain, Austen, Billy Budd…By the time I was twelve, I was picking them out myself, and my brother Suman was sending me the books he had read in college: The Prince, Don Quixote, Candide, Le Morte D’Arthur, Beowulf, Thoreau, Sartre, Camus. Some left more of a mark than others. Brave New World founded my nascent moral philosophy and became the subject of my college admissions essay, in which I argued that happiness was not the point of life. Hamlet bore me a thousand times through the usual adolescent crises. “To His Coy Mistress” and other romantic poems led me and my friends on various joyful misadventures throughout high school—we often sneaked out at night to, for example, sing “American Pie” beneath the window of the captain of the cheerleading team. (Her father was a local minister and so, we reasoned, less likely to shoot.) After I was caught returning at dawn from one such late-night escapade, my worried mother thoroughly interrogated me regarding every drug teenagers take, never suspecting that the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she’d handed me the previous week. Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world. ~ Paul Kalanithi

97:Se amava quel viso non indulgente, era perché era netto, espressivo e risoluto. Vedeva, o gli sembrava di vedere, come tali qualità fossero state mascherate o soffocate da atteggiamenti più convenzionali: una modestia simulata, un'appropriata pazienza, un disprezzo che si spacciava per calma. Al suo peggio - oh, lui la vedeva chiaramente, malgrado la possessione che esercitava su di lui - al suo peggio guardava in basso e di traverso e sorrideva timidamente, e questo sorriso era quasi una smorfia meccanica, perché era una bugia, una convenzione, un breve forzato riconoscimento delle aspettative del mondo. Lu aveva visto subito, così gli pareva, ciò che lei era in essenza, seduta alla tavola di Crabb Robinson ad ascoltare dispute maschili, credendosi osservatrice inosservata. Se, rifletté, la maggior parte degli uomini avesse visto la durezza e la fierezza e la tirannia, sì, la tirannia di quel volto, se ne sarebbe ritratta. Il suo destino sarebbe stato di essere amata solo da timidi inetti, segretamente desiderosi che lei li punisse o li comandasse, o da anime candide, convinte che la fredda aria di delicato riserbo esprimesse una sorta di purezza femminile che tutti a quei tempi facevano mostra di desiderare. Ma lui aveva capito immediatamente che lei era per lui, che lei aveva qualcosa in comune con lui, lei com'era veramente o avrebbe potuto essere, se fosse stata libera. ~ A S Byatt

98:As Candide went back to his farm, he reflected deeply on the Turk's remarks. He said to Pangloss and Martin: "That good old man seems to me to have made himself a life far preferable to that of the six Kings with whom we had the honor of having supper." "Great eminence," said Pangloss, " is very dangerous, according to the report of all philosophers. For after all, Eglon, King of the Moabites, was assassinated by Ehud; Absolom was hanged by his hair and pierced with three darts; King Naab son of Jeroboam was killed by Baasha..." "I also know", said Candide, "that we must cultivate our garden." "You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was put in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, to work; which proves that man was not born to rest." "Let us work without reasoning," said Martin, "it is the only way to make life endurable." All the little society entered into this laudable plan; each one began to exercise his talents. The little piece of land produced much. True, Cunégonde was very ugly; but she became and excellent pastry cook; Paquette embroidered; the old woman took care of the linen. No one, not even Friar Giroflée, failed to perform some service; he was a very good carpenter, and even became an honorable man; and Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: "All events are linked together in the best of all possible worlds. for after all, if you had not been expelled from a fine castle with great kicks in the backside for love of Mademoiselle Cunégonde, if you had not been subjected to the Inquisition, if you had not traveled about America on foot, if you had not given the Baron a great blow with your sword, if you had not lost all your sheep from the good country of Eldorado, you would not be here eating candied citrons and pistachios." "That is well said," replied Candide, "but we must cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire

99:A ce discours, Candide s’évanouit encore; mais revenue à soi, et ayant dit tout ce qu’il devait dire, il s’enquit de la cause et de l’effet, et de la raison suffisante qui avait mis Pangloss dans un si piteux état. Hélas! dit l’autre, c’est l’amour: l’amour, le consolateur du genre humain, le conservateur de l’univers, l’âme de tous les êtres sensibles, le tender amour. Hélas! dit Candide, je l’ai connu cet amour, ce souverain des coeurs, cette âme de notre âme, il ne m’a jamais valu qu’un baiser et vingt coups de pied au cul. Comment cette belle cause a-t-elle pu produire en vous un effet si abominable? Pangloss répondit en ces termes: O mon cher Candide! vous avez connu Paquette, cette jolie suivante de notre auguste baronne: j’ai goûté dans ses bras les délices du paradis, qui ont produit ces tourments d’enfer dont vous me voyez dévoré; elle en était infectée, elle en est peut-être morte. Paquette tenait ce present d’un Cordelier très savant qui avait remonté à la source, car il l’avait eu d’une vieille comtesse, qui l’avait reçu d’un capitaine de cavalerie, qui le devait à une marquise, qui le tenait d’un page, qui l’avait reçu d’un jésuite, qui, étant novice, l’avait eu en droite ligne d’un des compagnons de Christophe Colomb. Pour moi, je ne le donnerai à personne, car je me meurs. O Pangloss! s’écria Candide, voilà une étrange généalogie! n’est-ce pas le diable qui en fut la souche? Point du tout, répliqua ce grand home; c’était une chose indispensable dans le meilleur des mondes, un ingredient nécessaire; car si Colomb n’avait pas attrapé dans une île de l'Amérique cette maladie qui empoisonne la source de la generation, qui souvent meme empêche la generation, et qui est évidemment l’opposé du grand but de la nature, nous n’aurions ni le chocolat ni la cochenille; il faut encore observer que jusqu’aujourd’hui, dans notre continent, cette maladie nous est particulière, comme la controverse. ~ Voltaire

100:I have only twenty acres," replied the Turk; "I cultivate them with my children; work keeps away the three great evils: boredom, vice, and need." As Candide went back to his farm, he reflected deeply on the Turk's remarks. He said to Pangloss and Martin: "That good old man seems to me to have made himself a life far preferable to that of the six Kings with whom we had the honor of having supper." "Great eminence," said Pangloss, " is very dangerous, according to the report of all philosophers. For after all, Eglon, King of the Moabites, was assassinated by Ehud; Absolom was hanged by his hair and pierced with three darts; King Naab son of Jeroboam was killed by Baasha..." "I also know", said Candide, "that we must cultivate our garden." "You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was put in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, to work; which proves that man was not born to rest." "Let us work without reasoning," said Martin, "it is the only way to make life endurable." All the little society entered into this laudable plan; each one began to exercise his talents. The little piece of land produced much. True, Cunégonde was very ugly; but she became and excellent pastry cook; Paquette embroidered; the old woman took care of the linen. No one, not even Friar Giroflée, failed to perform some service; he was a very good carpenter, and even became an honorable man; and Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: "All events are linked together in the best of all possible worlds. for after all, if you had not been expelled from a fine castle with great kicks in the backside for love of Mademoiselle Cunégonde, if you had not been subjected to the Inquisition, if you had not traveled about America on foot, if you had not given the Baron a great blow with your sword, if you had not lost all your sheep from the good country of Eldorado, you would not be here eating candied citrons and pistachios." "That is well said," replied Candide, "but we must cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire

101:Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to the senator, “I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted with those books, which are most of them written with a noble spirit of freedom.” “It is noble to write as we think,” said Pococurante; “it is the privilege of humanity. Throughout Italy we write only what we do not think; and the present inhabitants of the country of the Caesars and Antonines dare not acquire a single idea without the permission of a Dominican father. I should be enamored of the spirit of the English nation, did it not utterly frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion and the spirit of party.” Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. “Who?” said Pococurante sharply; “that barbarian who writes a tedious commentary in ten books of rumbling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis? that slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation, by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from Heaven’s armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Diety as producing the whole universe by his fiat? Can I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso’s Hell and the Devil; who transforms Lucifer sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pygmy; who makes him say the same thing over again a hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school–divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation of Ariosto’s comic invention of firearms, represents the devils and angels cannonading each other in Heaven? Neither I nor any other Italian can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy reveries; but the marriage of Sin and Death, and snakes issuing from the womb of the former, are enough to make any person sick that is not lost to all sense of delicacy. This obscene, whimsical, and disagreeable poem met with the neglect it deserved at its first publication; and I only treat the author now as he was treated in his own country by his contemporaries. ~ Voltaire

102:Blood & Honey I began by loving women & the love turned to bitterness. My mother, the bitter, whose bitter lessontrust no one, especially no malecaused me to be naive for too many years, in mere rebellion against that bitterness. If she was Medea, I would be Candide & bleed in every sexual war, & water my garden with menstrual blood & grow the juiciest fruits. (Like the woman who watered her roses with blood & won all the prizes, though no one knew why.) If she was Lady Macbeth, I would be Don Quixote& never pass up a windmill without a fight, & never choose discretion over valor. My valor was often foolish. I was rash (though others called me brave). My poems were red flags To lure the bulls. The picadors smelled blood & jabbed my novels. 32 I had only begun by loving women& ended by hating their deceit, hating the hate they feed their daughters, hating the self-hate they feed themselves, hating the contempt they feed their men, as they claim weaknesstheir secret strength. For who can be crueler than a woman who is cruel out of her impotence? & who can be meaner than a woman who desires the only room with a view? Even in chess she shouts: 'Off with their heads!' & the poor king walks one step forward, one step back. But I began by loving women, loving myself despite my mother's lesson, loving my ten fingers, ten toes, my puckered navel, my lips that are too thick & my eyes the color of ink. Because I believed in them, I found gentle men. Because I loved myself, I was loved. Because I had faith, 33 the unicorn licked my arm, the rabbit nestled in my skirts, the griffin slept curled up at the bottom of my bed. Bitter women, there is milk under this poem. What you sow in blood shall be harvested in honey. ~ Erica Jong

103:In this short philosophical novel he completely undermined the kind of optimism about humanity and the universe that Pope and Leibniz had expressed, and he did it in such an entertaining way that the book became an instant bestseller. Wisely Voltaire left his name off the title page, otherwise its publication would have landed him in prison again for making fun of religious beliefs. Candide is the central character. His name suggests innocence and purity. At the start of the book, he is a young servant who falls hopelessly in love with his master's daughter, Cunégonde, but is chased out of her father's castle when he is caught in a compromising position with her. From then on, in a fast-moving and often fantastical tale, he travels through real and imaginary countries with his philosophy tutor Dr Pangloss, until he finally meets up with his lost love Cunégonde again, though by now she is old and ugly. In a series of comical episodes Candide and Pangloss witness terrible events and encounter a range of characters along the way, all of whom have themselves suffered terrible misfortunes. Voltaire uses the philosophy tutor, Pangloss, to spout a caricatured version of Leibniz's philosophy, which the writer then pokes fun at. Whatever happens, whether it is a natural disaster, torture, war, rape, religious persecution or slavery, Pangloss treats it as further confirmation that they live in the best of all possible worlds. Rather than causing him to rethink his beliefs, each disaster just increases his confidence that everything is for the best and this is how things had to be to produce the most perfect situation. Voltaire takes great delight in revealing Pangloss' refusal to see what is in front of him, and this is meant to mock Leibniz's optimism. But to be fair to Leibniz, his point wasn't that evil doesn't occur, but rather that the evil that does exist was needed to bring about the best possible world. It does, however, suggest that there is so much evil in the world that it is hardly likely that Leibniz was right – this can't be the minimum needed to achieve a good result. There is just too much pain and suffering in the world for that to be true. In ~ Nigel Warburton

104:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets ~ Mortimer J Adler

105:Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer - Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus - Tragedies 4. Sophocles - Tragedies 5. Herodotus - Histories 6. Euripides - Tragedies 7. Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates - Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes - Comedies 10. Plato - Dialogues 11. Aristotle - Works 12. Epicurus - Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid - Elements 14.Archimedes - Works 15. Apollonius of Perga - Conic Sections 16. Cicero - Works 17. Lucretius - On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil - Works 19. Horace - Works 20. Livy - History of Rome 21. Ovid - Works 22. Plutarch - Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus - Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa - Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus - Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy - Almagest 27. Lucian - Works 28. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations 29. Galen - On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus - The Enneads 32. St. Augustine - On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njal 36. St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer - Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci - Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus - The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More - Utopia 44. Martin Luther - Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin - Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne - Essays 48. William Gilbert - On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser - Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon - Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare - Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei - Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler - Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey - On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan 57. René Descartes - Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton - Works 59. Molière - Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal - The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens - Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza - Ethics 63. John Locke - Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine - Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton - Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67.Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve - The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley - Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope - Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu - Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire - Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets    ~ Mortimer J Adler,

106:To The Poet On The Subject Of Flowers Thus continually towards the dark azure, Where the sea of topazes shimmers, Will function in your evening The Lilies, those pessaries of ectasy! In our own age sago, When Plants work for their living, The Lily will dring blue loathings From you religious Proses! - Monsieur de Kerdrel's fleur-de-lys, The Sonnet of eighteen-thirty, The Lily they bestow on the Bard Together with the pink and the amaranth! Lilies! lilies! None to be seen! Yet in your Verse, like the sleeves Of the soft-footed Women of Sin, Always these white flowers shiver! Always, Dear Man, when you bathe, Your shirt with yellow oxters Swells in the morning breezes Above the muddy forget-menots! Love get through your customs Only Lilacs, - o eye-wash! And the Wild Violets, Sugary spittle of the dark Nymphs!... II O Poets, if you had Roses, blown Roses, Red upon laurel stems, And swollen with a thousand octaves! If Banville would make them snow down, Blood-tinged, whirling, 215 Blacking the wild eye of the stranger With his ill-disposed interpretations! In your forests and in your meadows, O very peaceful photographers! The Flora is more or less diverse Like the stoppers on decanters! Always those French vegetables, Cross-gained, phthisical, absurd, Navigated by the peaceful bellies Of basset-hounds in twilight; Always, after frightful drawings Of blue Lotuses or Sunflowers, Pink prints, holy pictures For young girls making their communion! The Asoka Ode agrees with the Loretto window stanza form; And heavy vivid butterflies Are dunging on the Daisy. Old greenery, and old galloons! O vegetable fancy biscuits! fancy-flowers of old Drawing-rooms! - For cockchafers, not rattlesnakes, The pulling vegetable baby dolls Which Grandville would have put round the margins, And which sucked in their colours From ill-natured stars with eyeshades! Yes, the drooling from your shepherd's pipes Make some priceless glucoses! - Pile of fried eggs in hold hats, Lilies, Asokas, Lilacs and Roses!... III O white Hunter, running sockingless Across the panic Pastures, 216 Can you not, ought you not To know your botany a little? I'm afraid you'd make succeed, To russet Crickets, Cantharides, And Rio golds to blues of Rhine, In short, to Norways, Floridas: But, My dear Chap, Art does not consist now, - it's the truth, - in allowing To the astonishing Eucalyptus boa-constrictors a hexameter long; There now!... As if Mahogany Served only, even in our Guianas, As helter-skelters for monkeys, Among the heavy vertigo of the lianas! - In short, is a Flower, Rosemary Or Lily, dead or alive, worth The excrement of one sea-bird? Is it worth a solitary candle-drip? - And I mean what I say! You, even sitting over there, in a Bamboo hut, - with the shutters Closed, and brown Persian rugs for hangings, You would scrawl blossoms Worthy of extravagant Oise!... - Poet ! these are reasonnings No less absurd than arrogant!... IV Speak, not of pampas in the spring Black with terrible revolts, But of tobacco and cotton trees! Speak of exotic harvests! Say, white face which Phoebus has tanned, How many dollars 217 Pedro Velasquez of Habana ; Cover with excrement the sea of Sorrento Where the Swans go in thousands; Let your lines campaign For the clearing of the mangrove swamps Riddled with pools and water-snakes! Your quatrain plunges into the bloody thickets And come back to offer to Humanity Various subjects: white sugar, Bronchial lozenges, and rubbers! Let us know though You wheter the yellownesses Of snow Peaks, near the Tropics, Are insects which lay many eggs Or microscopic lichens! Find, o Hunter, we desire it, One or two scented madder plants Which Nature in trousers May cause to bloom! - fr our Armies! Find, on the outskirts of the Sleeping Wood, Flowers, whick look like snouts, Out of which drip golden pomades On to the dark hair of buffaloes! Find, in wild meadows, where on the Blue Grass Shivers the silver of downy gowths, Calyxex full of fiery Eggs Cooking among the essential oils! Find downy Thistles Whose wool ten asses with glaring eyes Labour to spin! Find Flowers which are chairs! Yes, find in the heart of coal-black seams Flowers that are almost stones, - marvellous ones! Which, close to their hard pale ovaries Bear gemlike tonsils! 218 Srve us, o Stuffer, this you can do, On a splendid vermilion plate Stews of syrupy Lilies To corrode our German-silver spoons! Someone will speak about great Love, The thief of black Indulgences: But neither Renan, nor Murr the cat Have seen the immense Blue Thyrsuses! You, quicken in our sluggishness, By means of scents, hysteria; Exalt us towards purities Whiter than the Marys... tradesman! colonial! Medium! Your Rhyme will well up, pink or white, Like a blaze of sodium, Like a bleeding rubber-tree! But from your dark Poems, - Juggler! dioptric white and green and red, Let strange flowers burst out And electric butterflies! See! it's the Century of hell! And the telegraph poles Are going to adorn, - the iron-voiced lyre, Your magnificent shoulder blades! Above all, give us a rhymed account Of the potato blight! - And, in order to compose Poems full of mystery Intended to be read from Tréguier To Paramaribo, go and buy A few volumes by Monsieur Figuier, - Illustrated! - at Hachette's ! 219 Alcide Bava Original French Ce qu'on dit au Poète à propos de fleurs. Ainsi, toujours, vers l'azur noir Où tremble la mer des topazes, Fonctionneront dans ton soir Les Lys, ces clystères d'extases ! À notre époque de sagous, Quand les Plantes sont travailleuses, Le Lys boira les bleus dégoûts Dans tes Proses religieuses ! - Le lys de monsieur de Kerdrel, Le Sonnet de mil huit cent trente, Le Lys qu'on donne au Ménestrel Avec l'oeillet et l'amarante ! Des lys ! Des lys ! On n'en voit pas ! Et dans ton Vers, tel que les manches Des Pécheresses aux doux pas, Toujours frissonnent ces fleurs blanches ! Toujours, Cher, quand tu prends un bain, Ta chemise aux aisselles blondes Se gonfle aux brises du matin Sur les myosotis immondes ! L'amour ne passe à tes octrois Que les Lilas, - ô balançoires ! Et les Violettes du Bois, Crachats sucrés des Nymphes noires !... 220 II O Poètes, quand vous auriez Les Roses, les Roses soufflées, Rouges sur tiges de lauriers, Et de mille octaves enflées ! Quand Banville en ferait neiger, Sanguinolentes, tournoyantes, Pochant l'oeil fou de l'étranger Aux lectures mal bienveillantes ! De vos forêts et de vos prés, O très paisibles photographes ! La Flore est diverse à peu près Comme des bouchons de carafes ! Toujours les végétaux Français, Hargneux, phtisiques, ridicules, Où le ventre des chiens bassets Navigue en paix, aux crépuscules ; Toujours, après d'affreux dessins De Lotos bleus ou d'Hélianthes, Estampes roses, sujets saints Pour de jeunes communiantes ! L'Ode Açoka cadre avec la Strophe en fenêtre de lorette ; Et de lourds papillons d'éclat Fientent sur la Pâquerette. Vieilles verdures, vieux galons ! O croquignoles végétales ! Fleurs fantasques des vieux Salons ! - Aux hannetons, pas aux crotales, Ces poupards végétaux en pleurs Que Grandville eût mis aux lisières, Et qu'allaitèrent de couleurs De méchants astres à visières ! 221 Oui, vos bavures de pipeaux Font de précieuses glucoses ! - Tas d'oeufs frits dans de vieux chapeaux, Lys, Açokas, Lilas et Roses !... III O blanc Chasseur, qui cours sans bas À travers le Pâtis panique, Ne peux-tu pas, ne dois-tu pas Connaître un peu ta botanique ? Tu ferais succéder, je crains, Aux Grillons roux les Cantharides, L'or des Rios au bleu des Rhins, Bref, aux Norwèges les Florides : Mais, Cher, l'Art n'est plus, maintenant, - C'est la vérité, - de permettre À l'Eucalyptus étonnant Des constrictors d'un hexamètre ; Là !... Comme si les Acajous Ne servaient, même en nos Guyanes, Qu'aux cascades des sapajous, Au lourd délire des lianes ! - En somme, une Fleur, Romarin Ou Lys, vive ou morte, vaut-elle Un excrément d'oiseau marin ? Vaut-elle un seul pleur de chandelle ? - Et j'ai dit ce que je voulais ! Toi, même assis là-bas, dans une Cabane de bambous, - volets Clos, tentures de perse brune, Tu torcherais des floraisons Dignes d'Oises extravagantes !... - Poète ! ce sont des raisons Non moins risibles qu'arrogantes !... 222 IV Dis, non les pampas printaniers Noirs d'épouvantables révoltes, Mais les tabacs, les cotonniers ! Dis les exotiques récoltes ! Dis, front blanc que Phébus tanna, De combien de dollars se rente Pedro Velasquez, Habana ; Incague la mer de Sorrente Où vont les Cygnes par milliers ; Que tes strophes soient des réclames Pour l'abatis des mangliers Fouillés des Hydres et des lames ! Ton quatrain plonge aux bois sanglants Et revient proposer aux Hommes Divers sujets de sucres blancs, De pectoraires et de gommes ! Sachons par Toi si les blondeurs Des Pics neigeux, vers les Tropiques, Sont ou des insectes pondeurs Ou des lichens microscopiques ! Trouve, ô Chasseur, nous le voulons, Quelques garances parfumées Que la Nature en pantalons Fasse éclore ! - pour nos Armées ! Trouve, aux abords du Bois qui dort, Les fleurs, pareilles à des mufles, D'où bavent des pommades d'or Sur les cheveux sombres des Buffles ! Trouve, aux prés fous, où sur le Bleu Tremble l'argent des pubescences, Des calices pleins d'Oeufs de feu Qui cuisent parmi les essences ! 223 Trouve des Chardons cotonneux Dont dix ânes aux yeux de braises Travaillent à filer les noeuds ! Trouve des Fleurs qui soient des chaises ! Oui, trouve au coeur des noirs filons Des fleurs presque pierres, - fameuses ! Qui vers leurs durs ovaires blonds Aient des amygdales gemmeuses ! Sers-nous, ô Farceur, tu le peux, Sur un plat de vermeil splendide Des ragoûts de Lys sirupeux Mordant nos cuillers Alfénide ! Quelqu'un dira le grand Amour, Voleur des sombres Indulgences : Mais ni Renan, ni le chat Murr N'ont vu les Bleus Thyrses immenses ! Toi, fais jouer dans nos torpeurs, Par les parfums les hystéries ; Exalte-nous vers les candeurs Plus candides que les Maries... Commerçant ! colon ! médium ! Ta Rime sourdra, rose ou blanche, Comme un rayon de sodium, Comme un caoutchouc qui s'épanche ! De tes noirs Poèmes, - Jongleur ! Blancs, verts, et rouges dioptriques, Que s'évadent d'étranges fleurs Et des papillons électriques ! Voilà ! c'est le Siècle d'enfer ! Et les poteaux télégraphiques Vont orner, - lyre aux chants de fer, Tes omoplates magnifiques ! 224 Surtout, rime une version Sur le mal des pommes de terre ! - Et, pour la composition De poèmes pleins de mystère Qu'on doive lire de Tréguier À Paramaribo, rachète Des Tomes de Monsieur Figuier, - Illustrés ! - chez Monsieur Hachette ! Alcide Bava ~ Arthur Rimbaud

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