TERMS STARTING WITH
Voltaire calls Tiril one of the leaders of the fallen
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de: (1694-1778) French dramatist and historian. He was one of the leading Encyclopaedists. He preached a natural religion of the deist variety. Though characterized as an atheist because of his fervent antagonism to the bigotry he found in the organized religions, he nevertheless believed in a righteous God. He was opposed to all intolerance and fought passionately to right the evils he discerned in religion and in society in general. In ethics, he based his views on the universal character of morals in which he firmly believed. His famous Candide is illustrative of his keen satire in its blasting of the Leibnizean best of all possible worlds. -- L.E.D.
Voltaire in “Of Angels, Genii, and Devils.”
Voltaire, M. De. Chinese Catechism, Dialogues and
Voltaire, “Of Angels, Genii, and Devils.”
Voltaire quotes Enoch as his source, but no close
voltairean ::: a. --> Of or relating to Voltaire, the French author.
TERMS ANYWHERE
10 classes in Talmud and Targum,” says Voltaire
also by Voltaire in “Of Angels, Genii, and Devils.”
and Targum, according to Voltaire, “Of Angels,
angels, and hence evil. To Voltaire, apparently,
angels in Enoch writings. [Rf. Voltaire, “Of
angels in the Enoch listings, according to Voltaire,
Atarculph—according to Voltaire in his “Of
Atlantidae (Greek) Descendants of Atlantis; “The ancestors of the Pharaohs and the forefathers of the Egyptians, according to some, and as the Esoteric Science teaches. . . . Plato heard of this highly civilized people, the last remnant of which was submerged 9,000 years before his day, from Solon, who had it from the High Priests of Egypt. Voltaire, the eternal scoffer, was right in stating that ‘the Atlantidae (our fourth Root Race) made their appearance in Egypt. . . . It was in Syria and in Phrygia, as well as Egypt, that they established the worship of the Sun.’ Occult philosophy teaches that the Egyptians were a remnant of the last Aryan Atlantidae” (TG 42).
Avichi is a state, not a locality per se; nevertheless, an entity, whatever state it may be in, must have location, and consequently so far as the human race is concerned, avichi is Myalba, our earth in certain of its lowest aspects. Furthermore, in avichi, although it can be looked upon as being the representation of stagnation of life and being in immobility, nevertheless this refers to the temporary or quasi-inability to rise along the evolutionary ladder — yet not completely so. Beings entirely in avichi are born and reborn uninterruptedly, with scarcely intermissions of time periods. But “suppose a case of a monster of wickedness, sensuality, ambition, avarice, pride, deceit, etc.: but who nevertheless has a germ or germs of something better, flashes of a more divine nature — where is he to go? The said spark smouldering under a heap of dirt will counteract, nevertheless, the attraction of the eighth sphere, whither fall but absolute nonentities; ‘failures of nature’ to be remodelled entirely, whose divine monad separated itself from the five principles during their life-time, . . . and who have lived as soulless human beings. . . . Well, the first named entity then, cannot, with all its wickedness go to the eighth sphere — since his wickedness is of a too spiritual, refined nature. He is a monster — not a mere Soulless brute. He must not be simply annihilated but punished; for, annihilation, i.e. total oblivion, and the fact of being snuffed out of conscious existence, constitutes per se no punishment, and as Voltaire expressed it: ‘le neant ne laisse pas d’avoir du bon.’ Here is no taper-glimmer to be puffed out by a zephyr, but a strong, positive, maleficent energy, fed and developed by circumstances, some of which may have really been beyond his control. There must be for such a nature a state corresponding to Devachan, and this is found in Avitchi — the perfect antithesis of devachan — vulgarized by the Western nations into Hell and Heaven . . . ” (ML 196-7).
(b) Deism is a term referring collectively and somewhat loosely to a group of religious thinkers of the 17th (and 18th) century in England and France who in attempting to justify religion, particularly Christianity, began by establishing the harmony of reason and revelation and developed what, in their time, was regarded as extreme views: assaults upon traditional supernaturalism, external revelation and dogmas implying mysteries, and concluding that revelation is superfluous, that reason is the touchstone to religious validity, that religion and ethics are natural phenomena, that the traditional God need hardly be appealed to since man finds in nature the necessary guides for moral and religious living. Not all deists, so called, went toward the more extreme expressions. Among the more important English deists were Toland, Collins, Tindal, Chubb and Morgan. Voltaire (1694-1778) influenced by English thought is the notable example of deism in France. On the whole the term represents a tendency rather than a school. -- V.F.
belonged to the order of seraphim. Voltaire finds
books, unless Voltaire had in mind Sammael or
Voltaire calls Tiril one of the leaders of the fallen
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de: (1694-1778) French dramatist and historian. He was one of the leading Encyclopaedists. He preached a natural religion of the deist variety. Though characterized as an atheist because of his fervent antagonism to the bigotry he found in the organized religions, he nevertheless believed in a righteous God. He was opposed to all intolerance and fought passionately to right the evils he discerned in religion and in society in general. In ethics, he based his views on the universal character of morals in which he firmly believed. His famous Candide is illustrative of his keen satire in its blasting of the Leibnizean best of all possible worlds. -- L.E.D.
Voltaire in “Of Angels, Genii, and Devils.”
Voltaire, M. De. Chinese Catechism, Dialogues and
Voltaire, “Of Angels, Genii, and Devils.”
Voltaire quotes Enoch as his source, but no close
Chobaliel—according to Voltaire in his “Of
Devils” Voltaire speaks of deputies as an order of
Enlightenment: When Kant, carried by the cultural enthusiasm of his time, explained "enlightenment" as man's coming of age from the state of infancy which rendered him incapable of using his reason without the aid of others, he gave only the subjective meaning of the term. Objectively, enlightenment is a cultural period distinguished by the fervent efforts of leading personalities to make reason the absolute ruler of human life, and to shed the light of knowledge upon the mind and conscience of any individual. Such attempts are not confined to a particular time, or nation, as history teaches; but the term is generally applied to the European enlightenment stretching from the early 17th to the beginning of the 19th century, especially fostered by English, Dutch, French, and German philosophers. It took its start in England from the empiricism of F. Bacon, Th. Hobbes, J. Locke, it found a religious version in the naturalism of Edw. H. Cherbury, J. Toland, M. Tindal, H. Bolingbroke, and the host of "freethinkers", while the Earl of Shaftesbury imparted to it a moral on the "light of reason". Not so constructive but radical in their sarcastic criticism of the past were the French enlighteners, showing that their philosophy got its momentum from the moral corruption at the royal court and abuse of kinglv power in France. Descartes' doctrine of the "clear and perspicuous ideas," Spinoza's critical attitude towards religion, and Leibniz-Wolff's "reasonable thinking" prepared the philosophy of P. Bayle, Ch. Montesquieu, F. M. Voltaire, and J. J. Rousseau. The French positive contribution to the subject was the "Encyclopedie ou Dictionaire raisonne des sciences, arts et metiers", 1751-72, in 28 volumes, edited by Diderot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, Holbach, J. L. Lagrane, etc. What, in England and France, remained on the stage of mere ideas and utopic dreams became reality in the new commonwealth of the U.S.A. The "fathers of the constitution" were enlightened, outstanding among them B. Franklin, Th. Jefferson, J. Adams, A. Hamilton, and Th. Paine their foremost literary propagandist.
ing to Voltaire in his “Of Angels, Genii, and
in Talmud and Targum,” says Voltaire in his “Of
Malleus Malefcarum (p. 30); Voltaire, “Of Angels,
Philosophes: French 18th century philosophers, e.g. Condorcet, Condillac, Rousseau, Voltaire (q.v.). Philosopher King: In Plato's theory of the ideal state rulership would be entrusted to philosopher kings. These rulers would reach the top by sheer talent and merit after a long period of training in the school of everyday work and leadership and by a prescribed pattern of formal discipline and study. The final test of leadership lay in the ability to see the truth of the Platonic vision of a reality governed by universal ideas and ideals. -- V.F.
Religionis Veterum Persarum and in Voltaire, “Of
Sparks —referring to sparks, Voltaire in “Of
Sumiel —in Voltaire, “Of Angels, Genii, and
Talmud and Targum,” according to Voltaire in
the Egyptian king to die on the spot. [Rf. Voltaire,
to Voltaire in his “Of Angels, Genii and Devils.”
voltairean ::: a. --> Of or relating to Voltaire, the French author.
voltairism ::: n. --> The theories or practice of Voltaire.
With reference to the approach to the central reality of religion, God, and man's relation to it, types of the Philosophy of Religion may be distinguished, leaving out of account negative (atheism), skeptical and cynical (Xenophanes, Socrates, Voltaire), and agnostic views, although insertions by them are not to be separated from the history of religious consciousness. Fundamentalism, mainly a theological and often a Church phenomenon of a revivalist nature, philosophizes on the basis of unquestioning faith, seeking to buttress it by logical argument, usually taking the form of proofs of the existence of God (see God). Here belong all historic religions, Christianity in its two principal forms, Catholicism with its Scholastic philosophy and Protestantism with its greatly diversified philosophies, the numerous religions of Hinduism, such as Brahmanism, Shivaism and Vishnuism, the religion of Judaism, and Mohammedanism. Mysticism, tolerated by Church and philosophy, is less concerned with proof than with description and personal experience, revealing much of the psychological factors involved in belief and speculation. Indian philosophy is saturated with mysticism since its inception, Sufism is the outstanding form of Arab mysticism, while the greatest mystics in the West are Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Ruysbroek, Thomas a Kempis, and Jacob Bohme. Metaphysics incorporates religious concepts as thought necessities. Few philosophers have been able to avoid the concept of God in their ontology, or any reference to the relation of God to man in their ethics. So, e.g., Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schelling, and especially Hegel who made the investigation of the process of the Absolute the essence of the Philosophy of Religion.
KEYS (10k)
39 Voltaire
1 Mortimer J Adler
1 Dr Robert A Hatch
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
1275 Voltaire
11 Anonymous
8 Will Durant
5 Victor Hugo
5 Mark Ravenhill
4 Mikhail Bakunin
4 Donna Tartt
3 Thomas Bernhard
3 S T Abby
3 Richard Dawkins
3 George Eliot
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
3 Erik Brynjolfsson
3 Christopher Hitchens
2 William Blake
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2 Susan Jacoby
2 Stanis aw Lem
2 Stacy Schiff
2 Ry nosuke Akutagawa
1:Love truth but pardon error.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
2:To hold a pen is to be at war.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
3:One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
4:To enjoy life we must touch much of it lightly.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
5:Judge a man by his Questions, Rather then his Answer. ~ Voltaire, #KEYS
6:It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
7:It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
8:No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
9:God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh. ~ Voltaire #KEYS
10:There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
11:If God did not exist, it would be necessary for us to invent Him. ~ Voltaire, #KEYS
12:Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause. ~ Voltaire, #KEYS
13:To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
14:Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
15:The best is the enemy of the good. (Le mieux est lennemi du bien.)
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
16:To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
17:God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
18:Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
19:Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
20:If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
21:I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times but somehow I am still in love with life. ~ Voltaire, #KEYS
22:Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.
~ Voltaire, [T5],#KEYS
23:Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world. ~ Voltaire, #KEYS
24:Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
25:All men are born with a nose and five fingers, but no one is born with a knowledge of God.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
26:The man of taste will read only what is good; but the statesman will permit both bad and good. ~ Voltaire, #KEYS
27:It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
28:It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
29:I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
30:When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
31:Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing. ~ Voltaire, #KEYS
32:We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
33:Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
34:It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
35:What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
~ Voltaire,#KEYS
36:Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day. ~ Voltaire #KEYS
37: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, #KEYS
38:Arguably, the best advice for a serious student is to read a few hundred carefully selected books. An orgy of reading 30 or 40 first-rate books in a month ranks at the top of the usual list of human pleasures. If you wish, as an undergraduate, you could do it. You have time and energy, and with luck, you have the curiosity and courage to risk a month or two. Read Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Pascal, Voltaire, Berkeley, Hegel, Marx, and Kanetz. Or you could just play Frisbee on the Plaza of the Americas. Life is choice and there is much to learn. Not making a choice is a choice. ~ Dr Robert A Hatch, How to Study, #KEYS
39:There is only one Ethics, as there is only one geometry. But the majority of men, it will be said, are ignorant of geometry. Yes, but as soon as they begin to apply themselves a little to that science, all are in agreement. Cultivators, workmen, artisans have not gone through courses in ethics; they have not read Cicero or Aristotle, but the moment they begin to think on the subject they become, without knowing it, the disciples of Cicero. The Indian dyer, the Tartar shepherd and the English sailor know what is just and what is injust. Confucius did not invent a system of ethics as one invents a system of physics. He had discovered it in the heart of all mankind. ~ Voltaire, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
40:But in what circumstances does our reason teach us that there is vice or virtue? How does this continual mystery work? Tell me, inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago, Africans, Canadians and you, Plato, Cicero, Epictetus! You all feel equally that it is better to give away the superfluity of your bread, your rice or your manioc to the indigent than to kill him or tear out his eyes. It is evident to all on earth that an act of benevolence is better than an outrage, that gentleness is preferable to wrath. We have merely to use our Reason in order to discern the shades which distinguish right and wrong. Good and evil are often close neighbours and our passions confuse them. Who will enlighten us? We ourselves when we are calm. ~ Voltaire, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
41: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,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Paradise is where I am. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 2:Let us cultivate our garden. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 3:Love truth, but pardon error. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 4:Common sense is not so common. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 5:The best is the enemy of good. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 6:Minds differ still more than faces. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 7:The ear is the avenue to the heart. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 8:Happiness is not the portion of man. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 9:We cannot wish for that we know not. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 10:Anything too stupid to be said is sung. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 11:History should be written as philosophy. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 12:The superfluous, a very necessary thing. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 13:Virtue is debased by self-justification. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 14:Fear follows crime and is its punishment. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 15:Prejudices are what fools use for reason. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 16:God created sex. Priests created marriage. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 17:Man is free at the instant he wants to be. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 18:Liberty of thought is the life of the soul. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 19:To the wicked, everything serves as pretext. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 20:All styles are good except the tiresome kind. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 21:The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 22:Everything's fine today, that is our illusion. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 23:History is a pack of lies we play on the dead. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 24:It requires ages to destroy a popular opinion. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 25:No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 26:The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 27:Faith consists in believing what reason cannot. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 28:One great use of words is to hide our thoughts. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 29:A long dispute means that both parties are wrong. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 30:What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 31:Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 32:I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 33:The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 34:History can be well written only in a free country. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 35:Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 36:The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 37:Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 38:I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 39:Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 40:Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 41:Wherever my travels may lead, paradise is where I am. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 42:Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 43:History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 44:I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 45:What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 46:Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 47:If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 48:In every author let us distinguish the man from his works. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 49:It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 50:It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 51:No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 52:The greatest consolation in life is to say what one thinks. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 53:A company of solemn tyrants is impervious to all seductions. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 54:Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 55:The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 56:I have decided to be happy because it’s good for one’s health. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 57:There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 58:All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 59:It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 60:Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 61:He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 62:The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 63:Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 64:I read only to please myself, and enjoy only what suits my taste. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 65:To believe in God is impossible; not to believe in Him is absurd. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 66:Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 67:He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 68:Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 69:He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 70:If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 71:It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 72:Labor rids us of three great evils& 73:Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 74:Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 75:Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 76:The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 77:God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 78:God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 79:Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 80:Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 81:May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 82:Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 83:Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 84:It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 85:Let us work without theorizing, 'tis the only way to make life endurable. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 86:Medicine is the art of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 87:Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 88:To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 89:Nothing is so common as to imitate one's enemies, and to use their weapons. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 90:The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 91:An infallible method of making fanatics is to persuade before you instruct. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 92:Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 93:Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 94:A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 95:Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 96:Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 97:The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 98:All men are equal: it is not birth, but virtue alone, that makes the difference. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 99:Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 100:We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 101:I loved him as we always love for the first time; with idolatry and wild passion. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 102:Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 103:Our labour preserves us from three great evils - weariness, vice, and want. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 104:I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 105:I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 106:The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 107:superstition! Your inflexible rigours deprive humanity of the most sensitive hearts. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 108:The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 109:All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 110:God is not on the side of the big battalions but on the side of those who shoot best. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 111:What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 112:How I like the boldness of the English, how I like the people who say what they think! ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 113:It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 114:Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 115:Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 116:Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 117:Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 118:I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 119:Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 120:Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 121:All men are born with a nose and five fingers, but no one is born with a knowledge of God. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 122:God prefers bad verses recited with a pure heart to the finest verses chanted by the wicked. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 123:There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 124:Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 125:It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 126:I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 127:Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 128:He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 129:Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 130:The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 131:True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 132:The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture for wild beasts to fight in. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 133:The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 134:It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 135:I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 136:A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 137:Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 138:The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 139:It is very strange that men should deny a creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 140:All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 141:Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 142:The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 143:Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel, that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 144:The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 145:When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 146:Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 147:We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 148:I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 149:It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 150:Ours is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody religion which has ever infected this world. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 151:I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: & 152:In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 153:Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 154:The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 155:Clever tyrants are never punished; they have always some slight shade of virtue: they support the laws before destroying them. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 156:Wherever there is a settled society, religion is necessary; the laws cover manifest crimes, and religion covers secret crimes. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 157:Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 158:Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 159:Religion may be purified. This great work was begun two hundred years ago: but men can only bear light to come in upon them by degrees. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 160:If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 161:Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies. ( on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.) ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 162:We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 163:Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 164:Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 165:Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of whom they know nothing. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 166:It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 167:The hand of our parents traces on our feeble hearts those first characters to which example and time give firmness, and which perhaps God alone can efface. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 168:Toleration is the prerogative of humanity; we are all full of weaknesses and mistakes; let us reciprocally forgive ourselves. It is the first law of nature. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 169:What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he's certain he'll go to heaven if he cuts your throat? ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 170:We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 171:When men do not have healthy notions of the Divinity, false ideas supplant them, just as in bad times one uses counterfeit money when there is no good money. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 172:Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 173:The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 174:Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 175:Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 176:It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 177:Of all religions the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 178:Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 179:What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 180:Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all? ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 181:Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 182:Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delight of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 183:May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples? ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 184:Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 185:What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 186:You may be able to read Bernard Shaw's plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education? ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 187:At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 188:Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 189:The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 190:Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 191:Everyone should be his own physician. We ought to assist and not force nature. Eat with moderation what agrees with your constitution. Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. What medicine can produce digestion? Exercise. What will recruit strength? Sleep. What will alleviate incurable ills? Patience. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 192:Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 193:Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don’t tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 194:It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 195:Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau! Mock on, mock on: & 196:Accordingly, France Had Voltaire, and his school of negative thinkers, and England (or rather Scotland) had the profoundest negative thinker on record, David Hume: a man, the peculiarities of whose mind qualified him to detect failure of proof, and want of logical consistency, at a depth which French skeptics, with their comparatively feeble powers of analysis and abstractions stop far short of, and which German subtlety alone could thoroughly appreciate, or hope to rival. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 197:Everything happens through immutable laws, ... everything is necessary... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 198:By equating the human experience with data patterns, Dataism undermines our main source of authority and meaning, and heralds a tremendous religious revolution, the like of which has not been seen since the eighteenth century. In the days of Locke, Hume and Voltaire humanists argued that ‘God is a product of the human imagination’. Dataism now gives humanists a taste of their own medicine, and tells them: ‘Yes, God is a product of the human imagination, but human imagination in turn is the product of biochemical algorithms.’ In the eighteenth century, humanism sidelined God by shifting from a deo-centric to a homo-centric world view. In the twenty-first century, Dataism may sideline humans by shifting from a homo-centric to a data-centric view. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:My life is a struggle. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
2:Paradise is where I am ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
3:Fame is a heavy burden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
4:Men argue. Nature acts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
5:Candide by Voltaire, ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
6:Crush the infamous thing! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
7:Un bon mot ne prouve rien. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
8:Better is the Enemy of Good ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
9:Dare to think for yourself. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
10:Il faut cultiver son jardin ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
11:Qui plus sait, plus se tait ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
12:Better is the enemy of good. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
13:Every evil begets some good. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
14:Let us cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
15:A witty quote proves nothing. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
16:Fear could never make virtue. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
17:le mieux est l'ennemi du bien ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
18:Love truth, and pardon error. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
19:Love truth, but pardon error. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
20:Perfect is the enemy of done. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
21:Perfect is the enemy of good. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
22:We must cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
23:A witty saying proves nothing. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
24:Common sense is not so common. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
25:God created woman to tame man. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
26:History is fables agreed upon. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
27:Il faut cultiver notre jardin. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
28:Sect and error are synonymous. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
29:The best is the enemy of good. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
30:To hold a pen is to be at war. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
31:Voltaire was a smart cookie. ~ John Perry, #NFDB
32:Love truth but pardon error.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
33:There are no sects in geometry. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
34:What can we say with certainty? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
35:The road to the heart is the ear ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
36:...we must cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
37:All is but illusion and disaster. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
38:He is lifeless that is faultless. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
39:He is no Jesuit! He is no Jesuit! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
40:La vertu s'avilit à se justifier. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
41:Les beaux esprits se rencontrent. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
42:les généraux ; il entra dans leur ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
43:To hold a pen is to be at war.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
44:We must cultivate our own garden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
45:Clever tyrants are never punished. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
46:lo perfecto es enemigo de lo bueno ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
47:Music is the pathway to the heart. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
48:The best is the enemy of the good. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
49:The superfluous is very necessary. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
50:this is how men treat one another. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
51:What can I hope when all is right? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
52:écrasez l'infâme (Crush the Infamy) ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
53:God created women only to tame men. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
54:Learn to cultivate your own garden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
55:Minds differ still more than faces. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
56:Only your friends steal your books. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
57:The ear is the avenue to the heart. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
58:Virtuous men alone possess friends. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
59:Will is wish, and liberty is power. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
60:Change everything except your loves. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
61:Happiness is not the portion of man. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
62:Kimse bulamadı ve kimse bulamayacak. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
63:Le paradis terrestre est où je suis. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
64:This is no time to make new enemies. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
65:We cannot wish for that we know not. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
66:che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
67:Friends should be preferred to kings. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
68:The perfect is the enemy of the good. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
69:Work is often the father of pleasure. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
70:Writing is the painting of the voice. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
71:"You're a bitter man," said Candide. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
72:L'écriture est la peinture de la voix. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
73:Man is free the moment he wants to be. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
74:Mortals are equal; their mask differs. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
75:O che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
76:One does not arrest Voltaire. ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
77:Tears are the silent language of grief ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
78:The superfluous is the most necessary. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
79:We are rarely proud when we are alone. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
80:Wine is the divine juice of September. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
81:Anything too stupid to be said is sung. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
82:He vainly said that human will is free, ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
83:Illusion is the first of all pleasures. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
84:It is up to us to cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
85:Man is free the instant he wants to be. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
86:Prejudice is opinion without judgement. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
87:Tears are the silent language of grief. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
88:Everything can be borne except contempt. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
89:Heaven made virtue; man, the appearance. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
90:His face was the true index of his mind. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
91:History is the lie commonly agreed upon. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
92:History should be written as philosophy. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
93:The more a man knows, the less he talks. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
94:The superfluous, a very necessary thing. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
95:To have preferences, but not exclusions. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
96:What is not in nature can never be true. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
97:Almost all life depends on probabilities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
98:Fear follows crime and is its punishment. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
99:had no need of a guide to learn ignorance ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
100:Happiness is a good that nature sells us. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
101:Historians are gossips who tease the dead ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
102:History is the study of the world's crime ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
103:O supérfluo é uma coisa muito necessária. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
104:Prejudice is an opinion without judgment. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
105:Prejudices are what fools use for reason. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
106:The more you know, the less sure you are. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
107:There is a pleasure in not being pleased. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
108:This is no time to be making new enemies. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
109:Candide embraced his sheep with transport. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
110:For my part, I read only to please myself. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
111:God created sex. Priests created marriage. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
112:Let us confess it: evil strides the world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
113:Man is free at the instant he wants to be. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
114:Prejudices are what rule the vulgar crowd. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
115:The way to be a bore is to say everything. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
116:We only half live when we only half think. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
117:A good action is preferable to an argument. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
118:He who seeks truth should be of no country. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
119:Injustice in the end produces independence. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
120:Liberty of thought is the life of the soul. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
121:Now is not the time for making new enemies. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
122:Nước mắt là ngôn ngữ câm lặng của đau buồn. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
123:Virtue debases itself in justifying itself. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
124:We are all guilty of the good we did not do ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
125:A long dispute means both parties are wrong. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
126:History is a collection of agreed upon lies. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
127:Let us help one another to bear our burdens. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
128:Once the people begin to reason, all is lost ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
129:To the wicked, everything serves as pretext. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
130:trop de respect souvent mène à l'ingratitude ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
131:You are very harsh.' 'I have seen the world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
132:All styles are good except the tiresome kind. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
133:History never repeats itself; man always does ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
134:Love is a cloth which imagination embroiders. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
135:Once the people begin to reason, all is lost. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
136:Society therefore is an ancient as the world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
137:The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
138:The multitude of books is making us ignorant. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
139:There can be no happiness without good health ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
140:There is some pleasure in having no pleasure. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
141:A small number of choice books are sufficient. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
142:Everything's fine today, that is our illusion. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
143:History is a pack of lies we play on the dead. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
144:History never repeats itself. Man always does. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
145:I have no morals, yet I am a very moral person ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
146:I have wanted to kill myself a million times, ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
147:It requires ages to destroy a popular opinion. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
148:Le malheur des uns fait le bonheur des autres. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
149:L'homme est libre au moment qu'il veut l'être. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
150:No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
151:The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
152:The way to become boring is to say everything. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
153:Faith consists in believing what reason cannot. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
154:Hãy yêu sự thật, nhưng hãy tha thứ cho lầm lỗi. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
155:Indolence is sweet, and its consequence bitter. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
156:My life's dream has been a perpetual nightmare. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
157:One great use of words is to hide our thoughts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
158:To enjoy life we must touch much of it lightly. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
159:You are very harsh.'
'I have seen the world. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
160:A good imitation is the most perfect originality ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
161:Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent people. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
162:Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
163:Do well and you will have no need for ancestors. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
164:Indolence is sweet, and its consequences bitter. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
165:Nature has always had more force than education. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
166:Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
167:Self love is the instrument of our preservation. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
168:The composition of a tragedy requires testicles. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
169:theology is to religion what poisons are to food ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
170:The spirit of property doubles a man's strength. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
171:True power and true politeness are above vanity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
172:You write your name in the snow Yet say nothing. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
173:Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
174:Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
175:I also know that we should cultivate our gardens. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
176:I mean, this man was not /Voltaire/ we killed. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
177:It is only through timidity that states are lost. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
178:Men employ speech only to conceal their thoughts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
179:One man's Voltaire is another man's Screech. ~ Dennis Miller, #NFDB
180:Theology is to religion what poisons are to food. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
181:The secret of being a bore is to tell everything. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
182:What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
183:A woman can keep one secret the secret of her age. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
184:Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do, ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
185:Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
186:He is the man who knows everything and never dies. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
187:He never told a story, but everyone laughed at it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
188:I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
189:Il est coupable de tout le bien qu'il ne fait pas. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
190:Independence in the end is the fruit of injustice. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
191:One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
192:There are men who can think no deeper than a fact. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
193:To enjoy life we must touch much of it lightly.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
194:To make a vow for life is to make oneself a slave. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
195:All is for the best in the best of possible worlds. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
196:and the other to be hanged by the Grand Inquisitor, ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
197:Fools admire everything in an author of reputation. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
198:If God did not exist, he would have to be invented. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
199:If you wish to converse with me, define your terms. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
200:Nobody thinks of giving an immortal soul to a flea. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
201:Pangloss taught metaphysico-theologo-cosmonigology. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
202:The best way to be boring is to include everything. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
203:The infinitely small have a pride infinitely great. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
204:What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on... ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
205:You write your name in the snow
Yet say nothing. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
206:All succeeds with people who are sweet and cheerful. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
207:Christians have been the most intolerant of all men. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
208:England has forty-two religions and only two sauces. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
209:If it's too silly to be said, it can always be sung. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
210:Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
211:No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
212:One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
213:Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
214:The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
215:The joke wasn't about Voltaire. It was about Camus. ~ Gaby Dunn, #NFDB
216:The secret of being a bore... is to tell everything. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
217:Voltaire abolished Christianity by believing in God. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
218:égorgées, qui tenaient leurs enfants à leurs mamelles ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
219:Exaggeration, the inseparable companion of greatness. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
220:God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
221:Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
222:I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
223:Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
224:It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
225:Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
226:Language is a very difficult thing to put into words. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
227:me vit toute sanglante, et le soldat ne se dérangeait ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
228:Nothing is more annoying than to be obscurely hanged. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
229:Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
230:These marranos go wherever there is money to be made. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
231:Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
232:What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
233:Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
234:Wherever my travels may lead, paradise is where I am. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
235:but whether he be, or whether he be not, I want bread. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
236:history proves that anything can be proved by history. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
237:Ice-cream is exquisite - what a pity it isn't illegal. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
238:If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
239:It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
240:Judge a man by his Questions, Rather then his Answer. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
241:Judge a Man not by his question, but by his questions. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
242:Know that the secret of the arts is to correct nature. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
243:The only way to make men speak well of us is to do it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
244:The secret of being tiresome is in telling everything. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
245:Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
246:We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
247:You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
248:All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
249:Another century and there will not be a Bible on earth! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
250:Candide” never bored anybody except William Wordsworth. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
251:Chess is a game which reflects most honor on human wit. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
252:Fools admire everything in an author of reputation. For ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
253:He who thinks himself wise, O heavens! is a great fool. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
254:History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
255:I hate women because they always know where things are. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
256:I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
257:No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
258:Philosopher: A lover of wisdom, which is to say, Truth. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
259:the law of nature teaches us to kill our neighbour, and ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
260:Voltaire wrote, “The perfect is the enemy of the good. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
261:He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
262:It is said that the present is pregnant with the future. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
263:Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
264:La lecture agrandit l'âme, et un ami éclairé la console. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
265:The darkness is at its deepest. Just before the sunrise. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
266:When it comes to money, everyone is of the same religion ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
267:Your destiny is that of a man, your vows those of a god. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
268:Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
269:Go get yourself crucified and then rise on the third day. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
270:If you want to kill Christianity you must abolish Sunday. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
271:I have but one prayer: 'Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
272:It is dangerous to be right, when the government is wrong ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
273:It is not enough to conquer; one must know how to seduce. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
274:I've decided to be happy because it's good for my health. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
275:The more estimable the offender, the greater the torment. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
276:Voltaire. «Ama la verdad, pero perdona el error.» Cogí ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB
277:What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
278:Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
279:Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
280:Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
281:Es difícil liberar a los tontos de las cadenas que veneran ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
282:If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
283:If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
284:I have chosen to be happy because it is goo for my health. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
285:In every author let us distinguish the man from his works. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
286:In every author, let us distinguish the man from his work. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
287:It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
288:It is not the answers you give, but the questions you ask. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
289:Man is not born wicked; he becomes so, as he becomes sick. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
290:Quando comeres, dá de comer aos cães, ainda que te mordam. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
291:There is only one morality, as there is only one geometry. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
292:Todo aquello demasiado estúpido para ser dicho, es cantado ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
293:Voltaire: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” This ~ Howard Marks, #NFDB
294:We never live; we are always in the expectation of living. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
295:Bí mật để biến thành một kẻ buồn chán... là cái gì cũng kể. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
296:Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
297:He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
298:I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
299:In the matter of taxation, every privilege is an injustice. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
300:It is difficult to free people from the chains they revere. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
301:It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
302:It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
303:No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
304:Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
305:Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
306:The greatest consolation in life is to say what one thinks. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
307:The heart has its own reasons that reason can't understand. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
308:The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
309:The only way to see the value of a play is to see it acted. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
310:To really enjoy pleasures, you must know how to leave them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
311:Voltaire abolished Christianity by believing in God. ~ Lytton Strachey, #NFDB
312:A little evil is often necessary for obtaining a great good. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
313:Every beauty, when out of it's place, is a beauty no longer. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
314:Freedom is to depend only on the law and not on men's whims. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
315:Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
316:How many things here do I not want (Voltaire when in London. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
317:The biggest reward for a thing well done is to have done it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
318:To become a patriot,
one must become an enemy to mankind. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
319:Voltaire was deeply impressed by it and cited it often. ~ Wendy Doniger, #NFDB
320:We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
321:we often meet with those whom we expected never to see more; ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
322:You must have the Devil in you to succeed in any of the arts ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
323:All the arts are brothers; each one is a light to the others. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
324:Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
325:Having lived with kings, I have become a king in my own home. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
326:If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
327:Il y a un extrême courage à courir à la mort en la redoutant. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
328:Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
329:It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
330:Jede Art zu Schreiben ist erlaubt, nur nicht die Langweilige. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
331:Je ne lis que pour moi; je n'aime que ce qui est à mon usage. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
332:One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
333:Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value - zero. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
334:The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
335:Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
336:Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
337:All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
338:As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good. ~ James Clear, #NFDB
339:Éternelles et brillantes clartés, soyez-moi toujours propices. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
340:He who dies before many witnesses always does so with courage. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
341:It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
342:No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
343:One should always aim at being interesting, rather than exact. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
344:There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
345:Truth is a fruit that can only be picked when it is very ripe. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
346:Truth is a fruit which should not be plucked until it is ripe. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
347:Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
348:Young women learn to feel more easily than men learn to think. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
349:All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
350:Antiquity is full of eulogies of another more remote antiquity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
351:as Voltaire put it, the perfect is the enemy of the good. ~ Rutger Bregman, #NFDB
352:A yawn may not be polite, but at least it is an honest opinion. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
353:By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
354:Er det ikke en skam, at fanatikerne er ivrige og de kloge ikke! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
355:God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
356:He who doesn't have the spirit of his time, has all its misery. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
357:Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
358:It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
359:Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
360:Mieux vaut un demon qu'on connait qu'un ange qu'on connait pas! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
361:my soul is the mirror of the universe, and my body is its frame ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
362:Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
363:They are mad men (Jews), but you should not burn them for that. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
364:Upon such slender threads as these do the fates of mortals hang ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
365:We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good; we do the best we know. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
366:When thou eatest, give to the dogs, should they even bite thee. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
367:Work keeps away the three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
368:A man loved by a beautiful woman will always get out of trouble. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
369:He was not the greatest of men but he was the greatest of kings. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
370:He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
371:Honor those who seek the truth, beware of those who've found it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
372:If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
373:Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
374:It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
375:Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
376:The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
377:The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
378:To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
379:A good cook is a certain slow poisoner, if you are not temperate. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
380:A lady of honor may be raped once, but it strengthens her virtue. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
381:Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
382:Fanaticism is a monster that pretends to be the child of religion ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
383:if God did not exist, it would be necessary for us to invent Him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
384:If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
385:If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
386:I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
387:I read only to please myself, and enjoy only what suits my taste. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
388:I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms. —Voltaire ~ S T Abby, #NFDB
389:It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
390:It's not inequality which is the real misfortune, it's dependence ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
391:There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
392:the women are never at a loss, God provides for them, let us run. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
393:To announce truths is an infallible receipt for being persecuted. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
394:We adore, we invoke, we seek to appease, only that which we fear. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
395:Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
396:We are astonished at thought, but sensation is equally wonderful. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
397:You can never correct your work well until you have forgotten it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
398:Being a bird ain't all about flying and shitting from high places. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
399:Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
400:He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
401:If God did not exist, it would be necessary for us to invent Him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
402:I swear that, not being able to be yours, I will belong to no one. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
403:It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
404:The pursuit of pleasure must be the goal of every rational person. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
405:Translations increase the faults of a work and spoil its beauties. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
406:When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
407:Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
408:He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
409:History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
410:History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
411:I am bored in France because everyone resembles Voltaire. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
412:If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
413:on doit des égards aux vivants, on ne doit aux morts que la vérité. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
414:The Pope is an idol whose hands are tied and whose feet are kissed. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
415:The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
416:The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
417:To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
418:Voltaire once said? ‘History is the lie commonly agreed upon. ~ Oliver P tzsch, #NFDB
419:Cela est bien, repondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
420:Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
421:It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
422:It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
423:It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
424:Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
425:Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
426:Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
427:The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
428:the nose has been formed to bear spectacles—thus we have spectacles. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
429:To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
430:Voltaire: “Judge a man by his questions, not his answers.”6 ~ Erik Brynjolfsson, #NFDB
431:An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
432:Come! you presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
433:God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
434:God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
435:Hidherimet e fshehta jane shume me te thella se fatkeqesite shoqerore ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
436:I serve your Beaune to my friends, but your Volnay I keep for myself. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
437:I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.” - Voltaire ~ Lily White, #NFDB
438:Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
439:The best is the enemy of the good. (Le mieux est lennemi du bien.)
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
440:To achieve a goal, a dream, a wish, you must plan it out for success! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
441:Villains are undone by what is worst in them, heroes by what is best. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
442:I know of only one serious thing on this earth, the growing of grapes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
443:It is noble to write as one thinks; this is the privilege of humanity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
444:Jos tämä on paras mahdollinen maailma, millaisia sitten ovatkaan muut? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
445:Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.) ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
446:Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
447:Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
448:The superstitious man is to the rogue what the slave is to the tyrant. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
449:Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
450:Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
451:To learn who rules over you simply look to those you cannot criticize. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
452:Voltaire said you know who is in control by what you can't say. ~ Kris Saknussemm, #NFDB
453:An admiral should be put to death now and then to encourage the others. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
454:Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
455:It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
456:It is impossible to imitate Voltaire without being Voltaire. ~ Frederick The Great, #NFDB
457:Les chagrins secrets sont encore plus cruels que les misères publiques. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
458:Les sorcières ont cessé d'exister quand nous avons cessé de les brûler. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
459:L'optimisme est la rage de soutenir que tout est bien quand on est mal. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
460:May God defend me from my friends: I can defend myself from my enemies. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
461:To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
462:Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
463:Where some states possess an army, the Prussian Army possesses a state. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
464:Antiquity is full of the praises of another antiquity still more remote. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
465:Doubt is not a very agreeable status, but certainty is a ridiculous one. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
466:El vino usado con moderación es medicina para el ánimo y para el cuerpo: ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
467:Everything is not as good as in El-Dorado; but everything is not so bad. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
468:Feeble verses are those which sin not against rules, but against genius. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
469:Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
470:God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
471:Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
472:One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
473:Si c’est ici le meilleur des mondes possibles, que sont donc les autres? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
474:Superstition sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
475:There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
476:To the living we owe our respect, but to the dead we own only the truth. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
477:Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
478:We are at the end of all our troubles, and at the beginning of happiness ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
479:You are very hard of belief," said Candide. "I have lived," said Martin. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
480:All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
481:For seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
482:Il faut toujours que ce qui est grand soit attaqué par les petits esprits ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
483:Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
484:It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
485:Les hommes se trompent, les grands hommes avouent qu’ils se sont trompés. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
486:Not all citizens can be equally strong; but they can all be equally free. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
487:On his tombstone only three words were necessary: HERE LIES VOLTAIRE ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
488:The malevolence of men revealed itself to his mind in all of its ugliness ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
489:The more he became truly wise, the more he distrusted everything he knew. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
490:The prudent man does himself good; the virtuous one does it to other men. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
491:To caress the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten away our heart. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
492:Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
493:A torch lighted in the forests of America set all Europe in conflagration. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
494:did you hear that
did you have any choice about whether to hear it ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
495:Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
496:Excellently observed", answered Candide; "but let us cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
497:I loved him as one loves for the first time—with idolatry, with transport. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
498:It is dangerous to be right in matters where
established men are wrong. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
499:Present opportunities are not to be neglected; they rarely visit us twice. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
500:The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
501:The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
502:This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
503:Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
504:To do is to be. -Descartes To be is to do. - Voltaire Do be do be do. ~ Frank Sinatra, #NFDB
505:To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
506:We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
507:All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
508:An infallible method of making fanatics is to persuade before you instruct. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
509:Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less miserable than we are. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
510:God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh. VOLTAIRE ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
511:I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
512:It is the triumph of superior reason to live with folks who don't have any. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
513:Nothing is so common as to imitate one's enemies, and to use their weapons. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
514:Our work keeps us free of three great evils: boredom, vice and poverty.” As ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
515:The comfort of the rich depends on an abundance of the poor. —Voltaire ~ Cintra Wilson, #NFDB
516:Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
517:Always beware of turning religion into metaphysics: Morality is its essence. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
518:Earth is an insane asylum, to which the other planets deport their lunatics. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
519:It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
520:It is not improbable that in hot countries, monkeys may have enslaved girls. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
521:Le doute n'est pas une condition agréable,
mais la certitude est absurde. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
522:Let each of us boldly and honestly say: How little it is that I really know! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
523:L'homme n'est fait pas pour travailler, la preuve c'est que cela le fatigue. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
524:Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
525:Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
526:Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
527:Shun idleness. It is rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
528:The interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
529:The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
530:Trabalhemos sem refletir demais; é o único meio de tornar a vida suportável. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
531:Uma paixão nascente e combinada explode; um amor satisfeito sabe se ocultar. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
532:Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
533:We must work without arguing ... that is the only way to make life bearable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
534:Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
535:Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
536:God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” -Voltaire ~ Angela Roquet, #NFDB
537:I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
538:I loved him as we always love the first time: with idolatry and wild passion. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
539:In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
540:Ist das die beste aller möglichen Welten, nun so möcht' ich die übrigen sehn! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
541:La medicina es el arte de distraer al enfermo, mientras la naturaleza lo cura ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
542:Le travail éloigne de nous trois grands maux : l’ennui, le vice et le besoin. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
543:No comparto lo que dices, pero defenderé hasta la muerte tu derecho a decirlo ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
544:Religion, far from being beneficial food, turns to poison in infected brains. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
545:The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
546:To succeed in chaining the multitude, you must seem to wear the same fetters. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
547:A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
548:Great men have all been formed either before academies or independent of them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
549:if a philosopher wishes to be useful to human society, he must announce a God. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
550:No trates de imponer la autoridad donde sólo se trata de la razón. VOLTAIRE ~ Walter Riso, #NFDB
551:Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them. -Francois ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
552:Those who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
553:Travaillons sans raisonner ; c'est le seul moyen de rendre la vie supportable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
554:Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
555:We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
556:A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
557:Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
558:Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
559:He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
560:If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
561:If you do not want to commit suicide always have something to do." -Voltaire ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
562:I have seen so many extraordinary things that nothing seems extraordinary to me ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
563:Les livres les plus utiles sont ceux dont les lecteurs font eux-mêmes la moitié ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
564:munca alungă din preajma noastră trei mari rele: plictiseala, viciul şi nevoia. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
565:Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
566:The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
567:There is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
568:You're a bitter man," said Candide.
That's because I've lived," said Martin. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
569:You sweet delusions of my mind
(From the poem 'From Love to Friendship') ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
570:(about Voltaire)...he was generally unbedeviled by any foolish consistency. ~ Thomas Mallon, #NFDB
571:As Voltaire noted long ago, “Illusion is the first of all pleasures. ~ Sendhil Mullainathan, #NFDB
572:Errors flies from mouth to mouth, from pen to pen, and to destroy it takes ages. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
573:Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
574:Give me a few minutes to talk away my face and I can seduce the Queen of France. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
575:If one doesn't get what one wants in one world, one can always get it in another ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
576:I only know in general that the people we are going to see are very atrabilious. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
577:It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
578:Love has various lodgings; the same word does not always signify the same thing. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
579:To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid - one must also be polite. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
580:To the living, we owe respect, but to the dead, we owe only the truth. —Voltaire ~ S T Abby, #NFDB
581:Voltaire, “To believe in God is impossible; but not to believe is absurd. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
582:We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
583:As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
584:He was unhappy only when he thought: and that is true of the majority of mankind. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
585:If there’s life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe’s insane asylum. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
586:I loved him as we always love for the first time; with idolatry and wild passion. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
587:Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
588:People will continue to commit atrocities as long as they believe in absurdities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
589:What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
590:As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
591:He who cannot shine by thought, seeks to bring himself into notice by a witticism. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
592:I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
593:I keep to old books, for they teach me something; from the new I learn very little ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
594:I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
595:Most of my life has been one tragedy after another, most of which hasn't happened. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
596:The burning of a little straw may hide the stars, but the stars outlast the smoke. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
597:The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
598:The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
599:The solution to the Muslim problem is a Muslim Voltaire, a Muslim Nietzsche—that ~ Ian Buruma, #NFDB
600:To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
601:What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions, and to reason correctly from them? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
602:Being unable to make people more reasonable, I preferred to be happy away from them ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
603:God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh. VOLTAIRE ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
604:If we do not meet with agreeable things, we shall at least meet with something new. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
605:If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
606:The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
607:The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
608:There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts, ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
609:There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
610:Voltaire once wrote, “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” Sir ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
611:All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
612:Common sense is both more rare and more desirable in leaders than mere intelligence. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
613:In short, the alphabet was the origin of all man's knowledge, and of all his errors. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
614:Let us leave every man at liberty to seek into him and to lose himself in his ideas. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
615:[...] o trabalho afasta de nós três grandes males: o tédio, o vício e a necessidade. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
616:Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
617:The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
618:You lack faith,” said Candide. “It is because,” said Martin, “I have seen the world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
619:A historian has many duties... the first is not to slander; the second is not to bore ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
620:«El fanatismo es una enfermedad tan contagiosa como la viruela», sentenció Voltaire, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
621:History never repeats itself,” said Voltaire; “man always does.” Thucydides, ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
622:In France every man is either an anvil or a hammer; he is a beater or must be beaten. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
623:La casualidad no es, ni puede ser más que una causa ignorada de un efecto desconocido ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
624:Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
625:Opinion rules the world, but in the long run it is the philosophers who shape opinion ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
626:Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. So said Voltaire, the realist. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
627:Persistence with patience and prayer pays with profits, prosperity and peace of mind. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
628:So it was that, for every decent and generous thing she did, dishonour was the price. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
629:Voltaire playfully wrote, “Ice-cream is exquisite—what a pity it isn’t illegal. ~ Phil Cousineau, #NFDB
630:What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
631:Work saves a man from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.” —Voltaire ~ Erik Brynjolfsson, #NFDB
632:After all, it is no more surprising to me to be born twice than it is to be born once. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
633:A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
634:Ci adoriamo, ma abbiamo paura di amarci; bruciamo ambedue di un fuoco che condanniamo. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
635:Everyone places his good where he can and has as much of it as he can, in his own way. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
636:God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
637:How I like the boldness of the English, how I like the people who say what they think! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
638:If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
639:I know of no great men except those who have rendered great service to the human race. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
640:It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
641:Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
642:One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
643:The effervescence of this fresh wine reveals the true brilliance of the French people. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
644:To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
645:We are obliged to place ourselves on the level of our age before we can rise above it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
646:All our ancient history, as one of our wits remarked, is no more than accepted fiction. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
647:Beware of the words "internal security," for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
648:Dont think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
649:God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
650:I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times but somehow I am still in love with life. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
651:La casualidad no es, ni puede ser más, que una causa ignorada de un efecto desconocido. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
652:when one is a lover, jealous and whipped by the Inquisition, one stops at nothing." The ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
653:Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
654:Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
655:Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.
~ Voltaire, [T5],#NFDB
656:Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
657:He vainly said that human will is free, and that he chose neither the one nor the other. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
658:I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
659:J'ai tant vu de choses extraordinaires, qu'il n'y a plus rien pour moi d'extraordinaire. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
660:La nostra esistenza è un punto, la nostra durata è un istante, il nostro globo un atomo. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
661:Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
662:Let us work without reasoning,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
663:Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
664:The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
665:Those who are absent, by its means become present; it [mail] is the consolation of life. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
666:Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
667:All pleasantry should be short; and it might even be as well were the serious short also. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
668:Changing a habit is hard work. But it's harder to find work that would be more fulfilling ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
669:Contemplation of the stupidity which deems happiness possible almost made Voltaire happy. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
670:Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever, or rage to anger. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
671:Let us read, and let us dance — these two amusements will never do any harm to the world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
672:Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
673:Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies. Voltaire, 1694-1778 ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
674:man was born to live either in a state of distracting inquietude or of lethargic disgust. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
675:Trust to yourself; let our own eyes determine;
Be they our tripods, oracles, and gods. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
676:Wisdom must yield to superstition's rules,
Who arms with bigot zeal the hand of fools. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
677:All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
678:All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
679:I assert nothing, I content myself with believing that more is possible than people think. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
680:Never having been able to succeed in the world, he took his revenge by speaking ill of it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
681:The angel, as he was soaring towards the clouds cried out: 'Make thy way towards Babylon'. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
682:The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
683:The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
684:Faith consists in believing not what seems true, but what seems false to our understanding. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
685:I acknowledge that four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
686:If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.’ – VOLTAIRE, FOR AND AGAINST ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
687:If you want to know who rules over you, just look for who you are not allowed to criticize. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
688:It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
689:Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
690:Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
691:Let us work,” said Martin, “without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
692:Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
693:The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
694:The fate of a nation has often depended upon the good or bad digestion of a prime minister. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
695:There is the history of opinions which is hardly anything but a collection of human errors. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
696:Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” —Voltaire ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
697:Voltaire said, ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. ~ S T Abby, #NFDB
698:Wir sind nicht nur dafür verantwortlich was wir tun, sondern auch dafür, was wir nicht tun. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
699:Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
700:God prefers bad verses recited with a pure heart to the finest verses chanted by the wicked. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
701:Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
702:Pangloss most cruelly deceived me when he said that everything in the world is for the best. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
703:There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
704:All men are born with a nose and five fingers, but no one is born with a knowledge of God.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
705:All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
706:Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
707:Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
708:But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
709:dice Voltaire: La paix vaut encore mieux que la vérité [se valora más la paz que la verdad]; ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
710:He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend- provided of course he really is dead. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
711:It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
712:self-esteem is a balloon filled with wind, from which great tempests surge when it is pricked ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
713:When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
714:If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."
(Notebooks) ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
715:I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
716:In this country we find it pays to shoot an admiral from time to time to encourage the others. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
717:Io sono quello che definisco uno spirito errante per le passioni d'altri; ovvero un imbecille. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
718:It is a fact that there is no country in the world where love does not turn lovers into poets. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
719:Since the whole affair had become one of religion, the vanquished were of course exterminated. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
720:Size kimin hükmettiğini öğrenmek istiyorsanız, sadece kimi eleştirme izniniz olmadığını bulun. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
721:Those who think are excessively few; and those few do not set themselves to disturb the world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
722:Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
723:A physician is one who pours drugs of which he knows little into a body of which he knows less. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
724:A witty saying proves nothing. ~ Voltaire Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Deuxième Entretien., #NFDB
725:He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
726:L'homme est né pour vivre dans les convulsions de l'inquiétude ou dans la léthargie de l'ennui. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
727:Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
728:The adjective is the enemy of the noun. Variant: The adjective is the enemy of the substantive. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
729:The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
730:True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
731:History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
732:Il est encore plus facile de juger de l'esprit d'un homme par ses questions que par ses réponses ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
733:It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
734:Needless to say since Christ's expiation not one single Christian has been known to sin, or die. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
735:One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
736:We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
737:Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
738:Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
739:But then, to what end,” said Candide, “was the world formed?” “To make us mad,” said Martin. “Are ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
740:Ceux qui peuvent vous faire croire en des absurdités pourront vous faire commettre des atrocités. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
741:If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your work alone to make answer. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
742:It is man´s faith to live either on agonies of fear and turmoil or in the prostration of boredom. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
743:It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
744:One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
745:Our priests are not what a silly populace supposes; all their learning consists in our credulity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
746:The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
747:The most amazing and effective inventions are not those which do most honour to the human genius. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
748:What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide. "That is because I know what life is," said Martin. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
749:Adultery is an evil only inasmuch as it is a theft; but we do not steal that which is given to us. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
750:Ceux qui ont avancé que tout est bien ont dit une sottise : il fallait dire que tout est au mieux. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
751:I am infinitely more touched by your extreme generosity than with the inhumanity of that gentleman ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
752:It is best one should quote what one doesn't understand at all in the language one knows the least ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
753:My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; there is nothing solid but virtue. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
754:There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
755:The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
756:To a toad, what is beauty? A female with pop eyes, a wide mouth, yellow belly, and a spotted back, ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
757:who demonstrated by A plus B minus C divided by Z, that the sheep must be red, and die of the rot. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
758:Fools admire everything in a noted author. I read only for myself, I like only what I have use for. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
759:If we would destroy the Christian religion, we must first of all destroy man's belief in the Bible. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
760:Il est ridicule de penser qu’une nation éclairée ne soit pas plus heureuse qu’une nation ignorante. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
761:It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
762:Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
763:Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
764:Sometimes we are less unhappy in being deceived by those we love, than in being undeceived by them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
765:The only reward to be expected from literature is contempt if one fails and hatred if one succeeds. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
766:this thought has met with the fate of many other useful projects, of being applauded and neglected. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
767:C’est qu’il faut bien citer ce qu’on ne comprend point du tout dans la langue qu’on entend le moins. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
768:It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
769:I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
770:Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because there is nothing to be gained by him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
771:Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
772:The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
773:What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide.
"That is because I know what life is," said Martin. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
774:A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
775:Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
776:It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force than the minds of a single village. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
777:Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
778:Non che il suicidio sia sempre follia. Ma in genere non è in un eccesso di ragione che ci si ammazza. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
779:One should always cite what one does not understand at all in the language one understands the least. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
780:The Jews are of all peoples the grosses, the most ferocious, the most fanatical, and the most absurd. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
781:The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
782:Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
783:God should worshiped, not avenged. It is absurd for insects like ourselves to think we can avenge God. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
784:It is not a mistress I have lost but half of myself, a soul for which my soul seems to have been made. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
785:Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
786:Luxury has been railed at for two thousand years, in verse and in prose, and it has always been loved. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
787:No one is ignorant that our character and turn of mind are intimately connected with the water-closet. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
788:S'il n'existait pas Dieu il faudrait l'inventer." (If God did not exist he would have to be invented.) ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
789:they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said all is for the best. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
790:All comes out even at the end of the day, and all comes out still more even when all the days are over. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
791:Gli sciocchi ammirano ogni cosa in un autore stimato: io leggo per me e mi piace solo quel che mi serve ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
792:Lois de convention que tout cela, usages arbitraires, modes qui passent : l'essentiel demeure toujours. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
793:The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
794:The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
795:Isn't there a pleasure in criticising everything and discovering faults where other men detect beauties? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
796:Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
797:Religion,” Voltaire is said to have remarked, “began when the first scoundrel met the first fool. ~ Maria Konnikova, #NFDB
798:The beauty which strikes the senses merely, the imagination, and that which is called "intelligence," is ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
799:Voltaire said that no problem could withstand the assault of sustained thinking. And he was right. ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
800:You have no control over the hand that life deals you, but how you play that hand is entirely up to you. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
801:A oportunidade de fazer o mal aparece cem vezes por dia e a de fazer bem, uma vez por ano, diz Zoroastro. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
802:In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
803:Meslier was the most singular phenomenon ever seen among all the meteors fatal to the Christian religion. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
804:The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
805:Voltaire'in doğru bir biçimde dikkati çektiği gibi, gerçek gereksinimler olmadan gerçek hazlar alınamaz, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
806:who demonstrated to him that the Bay of Lisbon had been made on purpose for the Anabaptist to be drowned. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
807:After Voltaire: envy is chained to the portico of the temple of glory and can neither enter nor leave. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
808:Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
809:Eu cred că oameanii au stricat puţintel natura pentru că ei nu s-au născut lupi şi totuşi s-au făcut lupi. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
810:o femeie cinstită poate să fie siluită o dată, dar tocmai din cauza asta virtutea ei sporeşte şi mai tare. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
811:Pleasure has its time; so too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age attend to thy salvation. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
812:Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
813:Voltaire, Candide, trans. Francois-Marie Arouet (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1991), p. 86. 7 ~ Erik Brynjolfsson, #NFDB
814:You guys, stop misattributing white nationalist quotes to me. Like, super seriously, it's not cool, dudes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
815:If we do not exert the right of eating our neighbor, it is because we have other means of making good cheer ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
816:The monster, fanaticism, still exists, and whoever seeks after truth will run the risk of being persecuted. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
817:Virtue between men is a commerce of good actions: he who has no part in this commerce must not be reckoned. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
818:Martin concluded that man was born to live in either the convulsions of distress or the lethargy of boredom. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
819:We adore each other, and yet are afraid to love; we are consumed with a passion which we both condemn. Zadig ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
820:he would tell us most amazing things in regard to the physical and moral evils that overspread earth and sea, ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
821:History contains little beyond a list of people who have accommodate themselves with other people's property. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
822:The Baron was one of Westphalia's most potent aristocrats, since his mansion boasted both a door and windows. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
823:It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
824:Mais à quelle fin ce monde a-t-il donc été formé ? dit Candide.
- Pour nous faire enrager, répondit Martin. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
825:Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
826:The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
827:Voltaire—you know him? He said that a man should cultivate his own garden. Guess I’m with him on that. ~ Holly Chamberlin, #NFDB
828:Whosoever does not know how to recognize the faults of great men is incapable of estimating their perfections. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
829:History is but the record of crimes and misfortunes. L'histoire n'est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
830:Hope should no more be a virtue than fear; we fear and we hope, according to what is promised or threatened us. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
831:L’amour est de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu’elle attaque à la fois la tête, le cœur et le corps. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
832:Voltaire argued that if God did not exist Man would be obliged to invent him, and was reviled for the remark. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
833:When one is loved by a beautiful woman, says the great Zoroaster, one always gets out of trouble in this world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
834:Y-a-t-il rien de plus sot que de vouloir porter continuellement un fardeau qu'on veut toujours jeter par terre? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
835:All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
836:Democracy is just a filler for textbooks! Do you actually believe that public opinion influences the government? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
837:He was natural and sublime, but had not so much as a single spark of good taste, or knew one rule of the drama. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
838:He who would not wish his country to be bigger or smaller, richer or poorer, would be a citizen of the universe. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
839:Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting for a better definition as a statement of facts as they are ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
840:I envy animals for two things - their ignorance of evil to come, and their ignorance of what is said about them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
841:Mais de toutes les superstitions, la plus dangereuse, n'est-ce pas celle de haïr son prochain pour ses opinions? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
842:Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
843:Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
844:The moment of meeting, and that of parting are the two greatest epochs of life as sayeth the great book of Zend. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
845:The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
846:The opinion of all lawyers, the unanimous cry of the nation, and the good of the state, are in themselves a law. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
847:To a toad what is beauty? A female with two lovely pop-eyes, a wide mouth, yellow belly, and green spotted back. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
848:Voltaire : La sombre Jalousie au teint pâle et livide Suit d’un pied chancelant le Soupçon qui la guide2. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
849:No, nothing has the power to part me from you; our love is based upon virtue, and will last as long as our lives. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
850:There is no such thing as an accident. What we call by that name is the effect of some cause which we do not see. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
851:Time is man's most precious asset. All men neglect it; all regret the loss of it; nothing can be done without it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
852:Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
853:It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
854:Proştii admiră orice în opera unui autor celebru. Eu nu citesc decât pentru mine; îmi place numai ce-mi foloseşte. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
855:The Baron's lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was therefore a person of great consideration.. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
856:Voltaire got it right long ago: ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
857:We know that all the arts are brothers, that each of them illuminates another, and that a universal light results. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
858:Consequently they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said all is for the best. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
859:Da ich nun einmal nicht imstande war, die Menschen vernünftiger zu machen, war ich lieber fern von ihnen glücklich. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
860:I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
861:I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, #NFDB
862:Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
863:Men, generally going with the stream, seldom judge for themselves, and purity of taste is almost as rare as talent. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
864:Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
865:Quando somos amados por uma bela mulher - diz o grande Zoroastro - sempre nos livramos de complicações neste mundo. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
866:The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
867:What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
868:When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is Metaphysics. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
869:An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction is always to have something to do. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
870:as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
871:Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
872:The famous physician Dumoulin said when dying, 'I leave two great physicians behind me, simple food and pure water.' ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
873:The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else's eyes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
874:What's optimism? said Cacambo.
Alas, said Candide, it is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
875:An opportunity fordoing an injury happens a hundred times a day, hut for doing good not once a year," says Zoroaster. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
876:At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings. ~ Ry nosuke Akutagawa, #NFDB
877: 'Let's get down to work and stop all this philosophizing,' said Martin. 'It's the only way to make life bearable.' ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
878:To paraphrase Voltaire: if they can make you believe in their absurdities, they can make you commit their atrocities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
879:Voltaire noted in 1763: “The interest I have in believing in something is not a proof that the something exists. ~ Jerry A Coyne, #NFDB
880:When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
881:Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
882:For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
883:I am the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I have already killed three, and of these three two were priests. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
884:I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
885:Ours [religion] is without a doubt the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most bloody to ever infect the world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
886:We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
887:When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
888:But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
889:French philosopher Voltaire once famously pointed out, the main problem with common sense is that it is not so common. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
890:How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
891:I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
892:It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
893:One day everything will be well, that is our hope,’ said Voltaire; ‘today everything is fine, that is our illusion. ~ A C Grayling, #NFDB
894:Po te jete se skifteret kane patur gjithmone te njejtin karakter, perse doni atehere qe njerzit te ndryshojne te tyren? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
895:The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
896:The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
897:A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
898:a river always leads to some inhabited spot. If we do not find pleasant things we shall at least find new things.” “With ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
899:People have declaimed against luxury for two thousand years, in verse and prose, and people have always delighted in it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
900:She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
901:En philosophie, il faut se défier de ce qu'on croit entendre trop aisément, aussi bien que des choses qu'on n'entend pas. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
902:Fanaticism, to which men are so much inclined, has always served not only to render them more brutalized but more wicked. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
903:In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
904:What! have you no monks who teach, who dispute, who govern, who cabal, and who burn people that are not of their opinion? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
905:Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
906:Individual misfortunes give rise to the general good; so that the more individual misfortunes exist, the more all is fine. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
907:It has taken seas of blood to drown the idol of despotism, but the English do not think they bought their laws too dearly. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
908:Oh! what a superior man," said Candide below his breath. "What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
909:The only reward to be expected from the cultivation of literature is contempt if one fails and and hatred if one succeeds. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
910:War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not color his crime with the pretext of justice. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
911:Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,
And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly? ~ Alfred de Musset,#NFDB
912:L'esprit d'une nation réside toujours dans le petit nombre qui fait travailler le grand, est nourri par lui et le gouverne. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
913:Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
914:Quien cree que el dinero lo hace todo, acaba haciéndolo todo por dinero… Cuando sólo es rico el que sabe limitar sus deseos ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
915:A State can be no better than the citizens of which it is composed. Our labour now is not to mould States but make citizens. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
916:I am so satiated with the great number of detestable books with which we are inundated that I am reduced to punting at faro. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
917:Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
918:Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
919:Voltaire’s Si Dieu n’existait pas , il faudrait l’inventer (“If God did not exist, he would have to be invented”). ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
920:All comes out even at the end of the day, and all comes out still more even when all the days are over.’ —VOLTAIRE ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
921:In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
922:It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
923:It is given to us to calculate, to weigh, to measure, to observe, this is natural philosophy; almost all the rest is chimera. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
924:Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
925:The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
926:There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
927:The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
928:the safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
929:What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
930:History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
931:It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. —Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV ~ Jonathan Maberry, #NFDB
932:It is the first law of friendship that it has to be cultivated. The second is to be indulgent when the first law is neglected. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
933:Joy is my character,
tis the fault of Voltaire.
Misery is my trousseau,
tis the fault of Rousseau.
Gavroche ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
934:L'occasion de faire du mal se trouve cent fois par jour, et celle de faire du bien une fois dans l'année, comme dit Zoroastre. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
935:When we cannot use the compass of mathematics or the torch of experience...it is certain we cannot take a single step forward. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
936:Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
937:I shall relate quite simply how things happened and without adding anything of my own, which is no small feat for an historian. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
938:Ottimismo, che sarebbe?" diceva Cacambo."E' il delirio di sostenere, ahimè!" disse Candido "che tutto è bene, quando la va male ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
939:A fool is a person who guesses and gets it wrong, a clever man is one who guesses, regardless of time period, and gets it right. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
940:Facciamo appena in tempo ad istruirci un poco che arriva la morte prima che abbiamo avuto il tempo di farci un po' d'esperienza. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
941:Hãy cho chúng tôi được đọc và nhảy múa; hai thứ thú tiêu khiển này sẽ không bao giờ gây ra bất cứ thiệt hại nào cho thế giới cả. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
942:Oh, quel homme supérieur ! disait encore Candide entre ses dents, quel grand génie que ce Pococuranté ! rien ne peut lui plaire. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
943:The most genuine and efficacious charity is that which greases the paws of the priests; such charity covers a multitude of sins. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
944:They soothed him with words of flattery, and they gave him hope—the two traps into which people the world over will always fall. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
945:Un bon mot ne prouve rien. ~ A witty saying proves nothing. ~ Voltaire, Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Deuxième Entretien, #NFDB
946: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, #NFDB
947:Inspiration: A peculiar effect of divine flatulence emitted by the Holy Spirit which hisses into the ears of a few chosen of God. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
948:Un habile homme dans les affaires est instruit, prudent et actif: si l'un de ces trois merites lui manque, il n'est point habile. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
949:History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
950:It must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
951:This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
952:Voltaire demiş ki: “Öldürmek yasaktır; o yüzden insanları davullar çalarak toplu halde öldürmeyen bütün kaatiller cezalandırılır. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
953:In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
954:The man who says to me, "Believe as I do, or God will damn you," will presently say, "Believe as I do, or I shall assassinate you." ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
955:Hiçbir ülkede hiçbir yasa iyi değildir. Nedeni apaçık ortada: Yasalar zamanına, yerine, gereksinmelere, olanaklara göre yapılmıştır. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
956:Je vais raconter ingénument comme la chose se passa, sans y rien mettre du mien, ce qui n’est pas un petit effort pour un historien. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
957:Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair and ideas; there comes a time when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair and ideas. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
958:My dear young lady, when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the Inquisition, there's no knowing what you may do. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
959:A physician is an unfortunate gentleman who is every day required to perform a miracle; namely to reconcile health with intemperance. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
960:But is there not a pleasure," said Candide, "in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
961:Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
962:The Bible. That is what fools have written, what imbeciles commend, what rogues teach and young children are made to learn by heart. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
963:The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers are what novels are for women. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
964:There can be no effect without a cause," modestly answered Candide; "the whole is necessarily concatenated and arranged for the best. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
965:Those who are absent, by its means become present: correspondence is the consolation of life. —VOLTAIRE, Philosophical Dictionary ~ Colin Dexter, #NFDB
966:What is optimism? Alas, it is the mania for pretending that all is right,
when in fact everything is wrong. —Voltaire, Candide ~ Stacy Schiff,#NFDB
967:When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when a man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
968:When the evening began, Fouquet was at the top of the world. By the time it had ended, he was at the bottom. Voltaire, 1694-1778 ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
969:Apparently, then, sir, you do not believe in original sin; for if all is for the best there has then been neither Fall nor punishment. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
970:In the memorable words attributed to the arch-skeptic Voltaire, “To believe in God is impossible; but not to believe is absurd. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
971:It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
972:Nous poursuivons ce qui nous fuit, nous fuyons ce qui nous poursuit. "
We pursue what flees from us, flee from what pursues us. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
973:Foi (de Zoroastro) que as nações herdaram este grande princípio: É preferível arriscar-se a salvar um culpado que condenar um inocente. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
974:If God is always on the side of the big battalions as Voltaire says, then, let us not waste our time with little detachments! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
975: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, #NFDB
976:Religion may be purified. This great work was begun two hundred years ago: but men can only bear light to come in upon them by degrees. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
977:Semakin aku banyak membaca, semakin aku banyak berpikir; semakin aku banyak belajar, semakin aku sadar bahwa aku tak mengetahui apa pun ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
978:Fools admire everything in an author of reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I like only that which serves my purpose. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
979:If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
980:If the first law of friendship is that it has to be cultivated, the second law is to be indulgent when the first law has been neglected. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
981:On meurt deux fois, je le vois bien
Cesser d'aimer et d'etre amiable
C'est une mort insupportable
Cesser de vivre ce n'est rien ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
982:What is this optimism?" said Cacambo. "Alas!" said Candide, "it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
983:when I found that he doubted of everything, I concluded that I knew as much as he, and that I had no need of a guide to learn ignorance. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
984:And to every man has been assigned a good and an evil angel; one assisting him and the other annoying him, from his cradle to his coffin. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
985:Everywhere the weak execrate the powerful, before whom they cringe; and the powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
986:He then represented to himself the human species, as it really is, as a parcel of insects devouring one another on a little atom of clay. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
987:If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
988:Toda relectura de un clásico es una lectura de descubrimiento como la primera. • Toda lectura de un clásico es en realidad una relectura. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
989:When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
990:Irregularity is inherent in our very nature; expecting people to be perfectly wise is as crazy as putting wings on dogs or horns on eagles ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
991:The passions are the winds which fill the sails of the vessel; they sink it at times, but without them it would be impossible to make way. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
992:We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
993:In de ene helft van ons leven offeren we ons leven op om geld te verdienen. In de andere helft offeren we ons geld om weer gezond te worden ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
994:Men fed upon carnage, and drinking strong drinks, have all an impoisoned and acrid blood which drives them mad in a hundred different ways. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
995:We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
996:Whenever an important event, a revolution, or a calamity turns to the profit of the church, such is always signalised as the Finger of God. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
997:All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
998:Upon what does happiness depend?” said Zadig; “I am persecuted by everything in the world, even on account of beings that have no existence. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
999:Common sense can be an effective guide, but as Voltaire pointed out in his Dictionnaire philosophique, common sense isn’t all that common, ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1000:Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1001:The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1002:Why are the Jews hated? It is the inevitable result of their laws; they either have to conquer everybody or be hated by the whole human race. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1003:How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1004:Les erreurs ne se nient pas … elles s’assument.
La tristesse ne se pleure pas … elle se surmonte.
L’amour ne se crie pas … il se prouve. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1005:The right of commanding is no longer an advantage transmitted by nature; like an inheritance, it is the fruit of labors, the price of courage. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1006:Use, do not abuse; the wise man arrange things so. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1007:We have our arts, the ancients had theirs... We cannot raise obelisks a hundred feet high in a single piece, but our meridians are more exact. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1008:It must also be noted that until the present time this malady, like religious controversy, has been wholly confined to the continent of Europe. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1009:Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1010:Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1011:I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little important and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1012:Ideas are like beards. Men don’t have them until they grow up. Somebody said that, but I can’t remember who.” “Voltaire,” the younger man said. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1013:Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1014:- Que é isso de optimismo? - perguntou Cacambo.
- Ai! – respondeu Cândido -, é a teimosia de sustentar que tudo está bem quando tudo está mal. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1015:When truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to rise. There never has been a dispute as to whether there is daylight at noon. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1016:An Opportunity of doing Mischief, says -Zoroaster-, offers itself a hundred Times a Day; but that of doing a Friend a good Office but once a Year. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1017:Burr is said to have remarked, “Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me.”61 ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
1018:If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1019:Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies." (Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.) ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1020: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, #NFDB
1021: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, #NFDB
1022:What was it Voltaire said? “To the living we owe respect, but to the dead only truth.” I honor Hugo’s memory by telling the truth about him. ~ Douglas Preston, #NFDB
1023: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, #NFDB
1024:Can you really believe that a drop of urine is an infinity of monads, and that each of these has ideas, however obscure, of the universe as a whole? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1025:Self love is like that instrument by which we propagate the species: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and it must be hidden. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1026:As to his religious notions—why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1027:History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1028:If mankind were born tomorrow it would divide into groups; each would scramble to invent their one and only god, and set about butchering each-other. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1029:It reminds us of a statement attributed to Voltaire: “God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to return the favor ever since. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
1030:Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies."
(Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.) ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1031:Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1032:The man visited by ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities is an enthusiast; the man who supports his madness with murder is a fanatic. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1033:The rude beginnings of every art acquire a greater celebrity than the art in perfection; he who first played the fiddle was looked upon as a demigod. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1034:Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.
[In a letter to Frederick the Great] ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1035:He’s over your head!” He was, but naturally I’d flung myself into the Sea of Voltaire anyway and emerged with nothing more than several aphorisms. ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
1036:Candide listened attentively and believed innocently; for he thought Miss Cunegonde extremely beautiful, though he never had the courage to tell her so. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1037:Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1038:Do transports of rage make a religion any truer? A man shot in a battle does not lose his temper, but argue with a theologian and he becomes implacable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1039:It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1040:The sentiment of justice is so natural, and so universally acquired by all mankind, that it seems to be independent of all law, all party, all religion. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1041:when man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1042:I know where there is more wisdom than is found in Napoleon, Voltaire, or all the ministers present and to come - in public opinion. ~ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, #NFDB
1043:It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1044:The Jews have always been waiting for a Messiah, but their Messiah is for them only, not for us, a Messiah ho will give them mastery over the Christians. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1045: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, #NFDB
1046:It's a terrible thing, what we did,” said Francis abruptly. “I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It’s a shame. I feel bad about it. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
1047:It’s a terrible thing, what we did,” said Francis abruptly. “I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It’s a shame. I feel bad about it. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
1048:Sabed, le dijo la hermosa dama con quien cenaba, que las que a veces califican de mujeres sin honra casi siempre poseen las virtudes de un hombre honrado; ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1049:Theological religion is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances. It is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1050:What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he's certain he'll go to heaven if he cuts your throat? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1051: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, #NFDB
1052:Every man can educate himself. It's shameful to put one's mind into the hands of those whom you wouldn't entrust with your money. Dare to think for yourself. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1053:Once your faith persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares absurd, beware, lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1054:Everywhere in the world, the weak detest the strong and grovel before them. And the strong treat them like flocks of sheep to be sold for their meat and wool. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1055:I found the book, Qur'an,] in spite of "the contradictions, the absurdities, the anachronisms", "rhapsody, without connection, without order, and without art. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1056:The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1057:Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1058:Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1059:It is proved...that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1060:The policy of man consists, at first, in endeavoring to arrive at a state equal to that of animals, whom nature has furnished with food, clothing, and shelter. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1061:To quote Voltaire, ‘Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. ~ Julie McElwain, #NFDB
1062:Miss," replied the old woman, "you do not know my birth; and were I to show you my backside, you would not talk in that manner, but would suspend your judgment. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1063:The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1064:We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1065:DOES FAITH MATTER? I want my attorney, my tailor, my servants, even my wife to believe in God because then I shall be robbed and cuckolded less often . Voltaire ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1066:He who has heard the same thing told by 12,000 eye-witnesses has only 12,000 probabilities, which are equal to one strong probability, which is far from certain. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1067:Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1068:tell her stories to alleviate her inquietude; for stories always amuse the ladies, and it is only by interesting them that one can succeed in the world." Mambres ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1069:The harmony of a concert, to which you listen with delight, must have on certain classes of minute animals the effect of terrible thunder; perhaps it kills them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1070:Vous craignez les livres comme certaines bourgades ont craint les violons. Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1071:As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1072:Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1073:Give me the patience for the small things of life, courage for the great trials of life. Help me to do my best each day and then go to sleep knowing God is awake. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1074:If you wish to obtain a great name or to found an establishment, be completely mad; but be sure that your madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1075:Men appear to prefer ruining one another's fortunes, and cutting each other's throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1076:Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1077:It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1078:A Frenchman who arrives in London, will find philosophy, like everything else, very much changed there. He had left the world a plenum, and he now finds it a vacuum. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1079:Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1080:There's scarce a point whereon mankind agree - So well as in their boast of killing me; I boast of nothing, but when I've a mind - I think I can be even with mankind ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1081:God's only excuse is that He doesn't exist," remarked Voltaire after a natural disaster that killed many people. Nietzsche loved this quote and wished he'd coined it! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1082:It is not enough to be exceptionally mad, licentious and fanatical in order to win a great reputation; it is still necessary to arrive on the scene at the right time. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1083:Life is thickly sown with thorns. I know no other remedy than to pass rapidly over them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1084:I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1085:It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1086:It was decided by the university of Coimbre that the sight of several persons being slowly burned in great ceremony is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1087:There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. ... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1088:We offer up prayers to god only because we have made him after our own image. We treat him like a pasha, or a sultan, who is capable of being exasperated and appeased. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1089:But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything--in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.' 'You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1090:Consolémonos por ignorar las relaciones que pueden existir entre una araña y un anillo de Saturno, y sigamos examinando lo que está a nuestro alcance. Voltaire. ~ Rodrigo Rey Rosa, #NFDB
1091:La joie d'un homme heureux serait une insulte ; mais deux malheureux sont comme deux arbrisseaux faibles qui, s'appuyant l'un sur l'autre, se fortifient contre l'orage. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1092:Moje dziecko, aby dać sobie radę z ludźmi, trzeba mieć za sobą kobiety; aby mieć za sobą kobiety, trzeba je znać. Wiedz zatem, że wszystkie kobiety są fałszywe i kurwy. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1093:What is toleration? It is the prerogative of humanity. We are all steeped in weaknesses and errors: Let us forgive one another's follies, it is the first law of nature. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1094:player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game. —Voltaire ~ Aleatha Romig, #NFDB
1095:This may sound somewhat obvious but, as the French philosopher Voltaire once famously pointed out, the main problem with common sense is that it is not so common. ~ Richard Wiseman, #NFDB
1096:What is tolerance? It is a necessary consequence of humanity. We are all fallible, let us then pardon each other's follies. This is the first principle of natural right. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1097:Yes I have seen Paris; it is like all those kinds, it's chaos, it's a crowd in which everyone seeks pleasure and in which no one finds it, at least so it appeared to me. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1098:I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1099:Among some of the famous men educated by the Jesuits we find Bossuet, Corneille, Molière, Tasso, Fontenelle, Diderot, Voltaire, and Bourdaloue, himself a Jesuit. ~ Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
1100:But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything--in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.'
'You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1101:De som menar att det finns sanningar som bör undanhållas folket behöver inte oroa sig: folket läser inte. Det arbetar sex dar i veckan och den sjunde sitter det på krogen. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1102:I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it. ~ Voltaire, in a letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville (16 May 1767), #NFDB
1103: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. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1104:Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing. —Voltaire ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
1105:I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker. ~ Voltaire, as quoted in More Random Walks in Science : An Anthology (1982) by Robert L. Weber, p. 65, #NFDB
1106:What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1107:A circumstance which has always appeared wonderful to me, is that such sublime discoveries should have been made by the sole assistance of a quadrant and a little arithmetic. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1108:A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1109:Ask a toad what is beauty....; he will answer that it is a female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head, a large flat head, a yellow belly and a brown back. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1110:Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1111:My brother maintains," I answered, "that those who wish to look carefully at the earth should stay at the necessary distance," and Voltaire very much admired the answer. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
1112:One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1113:Religion and politics never merged into a single construct, leading to Voltaire’s truthful jest that the Holy Roman Empire was “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
1114:Whatever you do, trample down abuses, and love those who love you. Different translation: Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing superstition, and love those who love you. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1115:What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1116:Imagine all contradictions, all possible incompatibilities--you will find them in the government, in the law-courts, in the churches, in the public shows of this droll nation. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1117: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,#NFDB
1118:Voltaire learned that he was again on the way to the Bastille. Like a good philosopher, he took to his heels—merely utilizing the occasion to elope with another man’s wife. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1119:Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1120:Voltaire expected that within fifty years of his lifetime there would not be one Bible in the world. His house is now a distribution centre for Bibles in many languages. ~ Corrie ten Boom, #NFDB
1121:What will the preachers say? .. to teach men not to persecute men: for, while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens and swallows up all alike. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1122:Among some of the famous men educated by the Jesuits we find Bossuet, Corneille, Molière, Tasso, Fontenelle, Diderot, Voltaire, and Bourdaloue, himself a Jesuit. ~ Saint Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
1123:Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1124:I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
1125:What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1126:Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1127:Goth was sort of the melancholy cousin of punk that says: there's a lot of evil in this world, there's a lot of very mean spirited people and that makes me sad. ~ Aurelio Voltaire Hern ndez, #NFDB
1128:The wicked," replied Jesrad, "are always unhappy. They serve to test a small number of just men scattered over the earth, and there is no evil out of which some good is not born. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1129:All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1130:Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game. —Voltaire MY ~ Aleatha Romig, #NFDB
1131:It is with books as with the fires of our grates, everybody borrows a light from his neighbor to kindle his own, which in turn is communicated to others, and each partakes of all. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1132:Os maus - respondeu Jesrad (um anjo) - são sempre infelizes: servem para pôr à prova um reduzido número de justos espalhados sobre a terra e não há mal do qual não resulte um bem. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1133:A true god surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough... [or inspired] books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1134:I also know that we must cultivate our garden. 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 for rest. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1135:I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it."
(Letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville, May 16, 1767) ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1136:During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying - half unconsciously, perhaps - to discover and to express the fundamental quality of his genius. ~ Lytton Strachey, #NFDB
1137:If they're from the village, you take them to the inn. If they're from the city, you treat them with respect when they are beautiful and throw them on the highway when they are dead. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1138:Zadig saw how extremely dangerous it sometimes is to appear too knowing, and therefore resolved, that on the next occasion of the like nature he would not tell what he had seen. Such ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1139:Nothing could be smarter, more splendid, more brilliant, better drawn up than two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, cannons, formed a harmony such as never been heard in hell. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1140:Opinion is called the queen of the world; it is so, for when reason opposes it, it is condemned to death. It must rise twenty times from its ashes to gradually drive away the usurper. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1141:if Columbus in an island of America had not caught the disease, which poisons the source of generation, and often indeed prevents generation, we should not have chocolate and cochineal ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1142:For," said he, "all that is is for the best. If there is a volcano at Lisbon it cannot be elsewhere. It is impossible that things should be other than they are; for everything is right. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1143: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,#NFDB
1144:Only a Christian culture could have produced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche. I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian Faith. ~ Norman Davies, #NFDB
1145:Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us. —Voltaire ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
1146:Ce sont les quatre avant-gardes du genre humain allant aux quatre points cardinaux du progrès, Diderot vers le beau, Turgot vers l'utile, Voltaire vers le vrai, Rousseau vers le juste. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1147:Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.” Voltaire, 1694–1778 ~ Elizabeth Cobbs, #NFDB
1148:It was either Voltaire or Charlie Sheen who said, 'We are born alone. We live alone. We die alone. And anything in between that can give us the illusion that we're not, we cling to.' ~ Gabriel Byrne, #NFDB
1149:..mert van-e ostobább dolog, minthogy folytonosan viseljünk egy terhet, melyet szeretnénk földhöz vágni; melengetjük a kígyót, mely mardos bennünket, míg végre a szívünkbe eregeti mérgét. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1150:It is, it seems to me, to stop one's eyes and understanding to maintain that there is no design in nature; and if there is design, there is an intelligent cause, there exists a God. People ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1151:Let us meet four times a year in a grand temple with music, and thank God for all his gifts. There is one sun. There is one God. Let us have one religion. Then all mankind will be brethren. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1152:Good God!” cried he, “I have killed my old master, my friend, my brother-in-law; I am the best man in the world, and yet I have already killed three men; and of these three two were priests. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1153:And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
1154:The question of good and evil remains in irremediable chaos for those who seek to fathom it in reality. It is mere mental sport to the disputants, who are captives that play with their chains. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1155:The time has come for writers, especially those who are artists, to admit that in this world one cannot make anything out, just as Socrates once admitted it, just as Voltaire admitted it. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
1156:This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1157:It is ourselves alone that make our days lucky or unlucky. Away, then, with a vain prejudice, the invention of the priesthood, which has been transmitted by our ancestors to an ignorant people. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1158:The new religion without any secrets is philosophy. The old religion, said Aristotle, is necessary only for the uneducated; Confucius, Buddha, Voltaire and Lessing were of the same opinion. ~ Artur Phleps, #NFDB
1159:Voltaire’s pointed question, ‘What to say to a man who tells you he prefers to obey God than to obey men, and who is consequently sure of entering the gates of Heaven by slitting your throat? ~ Nick Cohen, #NFDB
1160:If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1161:Miss, you are seventy-two percent noble and don't have a cent. Whether or not you marry the greatest lord in South America - who has an extraordinarily handsome mustache - is entirely up to you. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1162:provou que (o prazer) é um presente da divindade, 'pois - dizia - o homem não pode dar a si próprio nem sensações nem ideias, recebe tudo; a dor e o prazer lhe vêm de fora, como sua existência'. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1163:to find why this sheep's wool was red; and the prize was awarded to a learned man of the North, who demonstrated by A plus B minus C divided by Z, that the sheep must be red, and die of the rot. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1164:Twenty years after the death of Luther there were more Catholics than when he was born. And twenty years after the death of Voltaire there were millions less than when he was born. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
1165:He was my equal in beauty, a paragon of grace and charm, sparkling with wit, and burning with love. I adored him to distraction, to the point of idolatry: I loved him as one can never love twice. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1166:I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1167:It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1168:The worthy administrators of justice are like a cat set to take care of a cheese, lest it should be gnawed by the mice. One bite of the cat does more damage to the cheese than twenty mice can do. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1169:Voltaire had once said that it was a good idea for a writer to live near an international frontier so that, if he angered powerful men, he could skip across the border and be safe. Voltaire ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1170:You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has always favored the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated reason. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1171:But how conceive a God supremely good/ Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,/ Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?
[Written after an earthquake in Lisbon killed over 15,000 people] ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1172:The supposed right of intolerance is absurd and barbaric. It is the right of the tiger; nay, it is far worse, for tigers do but tear in order to have food, while we rend each other for paragraphs. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1173:It was Voltaire who said that ‘in a government, you need both shepherds and butchers.’ The problem in France was that the butchers kept killing the shepherds, while the sheep turned cannibal. ~ Stephen Clarke, #NFDB
1174:If there are atheists, who is to be blamed if not the mercenary tyrants of souls who, in revolting us against their swindles, compel some feeble spirits to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1175:Man first creates the universe in his image, and then turns round to say that God created man in his image... As Voltaire quipped, if God created man in his image, man has returned the compliment. ~ Neel Burton, #NFDB
1176:Voltaire got it right long ago: ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ So did Bertrand Russell: ‘Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1177:What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1178:Los clásicos son esos libros de los cuales suele oírse decir: «Estoy releyendo…» y nunca «Estoy leyendo…». • Se llama clásicos a los libros que constituyen una riqueza para quien los ha leído y amado, ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1179:The necessity of saying something, the perplexity of having nothing to say, and a desire of being witty, are three circumstances which alone are capable of making even the greatest writer ridiculous. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1180:We are going to a new world... and no doubt it is there that everything is for the best; for it must be admitted that one might lament a little over the physical and moral happenings of our own world. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1181:I must give you a piece of intelligence that you perhaps already know, namely that the ungodly arch-villain Voltaire has died miserably like a dog, just like a brute. That is his reward! ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, #NFDB
1182:Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delight of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1183:Why should you think it so strange that in some countries there are monkeys which insinuates themselves into the good graces of the ladies; they are a fourth part human, as I am a fourth part Spaniard. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1184:Redoutez des liens formés par l' imprudence.
Le crime quelquefois suit de près l' innocence.
Le coeur peut se tromper ; l' amour et ses douceurs
pourront coûter, Palmire, et du sang et des pleurs ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1185:I have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us the three great evils - boredom, vice, and want. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1186:The Empire knew a time of peace, a time of glory, a time of plenty: it was the finest age the world had ever known. Justice and love ruled the Empire. The people glorified Zadig, and Zadig glorified heaven. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1187:You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1188: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, #NFDB
1189:He wanted to know how they prayed to God in El Dorado. "We do not pray to him at all," said the reverend sage. "We have nothing to ask of him. He has given us all we want, and we give him thanks continually. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1190: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, #NFDB
1191:"I have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us the three great evils - boredom, vice, and want." ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1192:What is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1193:All is a miracle. The stupendous order of nature, the revolution of a hundred millions of worlds around a million of stars, the activity of light, the life of all animals, all are grand and perpetual miracles. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1194:I know this love, that sovereign of hearts, that soul of our souls; yet it never cost me more than a kiss and twenty kicks on the backside. How could this beautiful cause produce in you an effect so abominable. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1195:Je ne suis pas d'accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je d‚fendrai jusqu'... la mort le droit que vous avez de le dire/ I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1196:The necessity of saying something, the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say, and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1197:Like Rousseau, whom he resembles even more than he resembles Voltaire, Shaw never gave a social form to his assertiveness, never desired to arrive and to assimilate himself, or wield authority as of right. ~ Jacques Barzun, #NFDB
1198:The Pride of every Jew finds cause to believe that the cause of their down fall is not their detestable politics, or ignorance of social graces, but the raft of God. They believe it took a miracle to undo them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1199:In cities where peace and the arts flourish, men are more consumed by jealousy, worry, and anxiety than they are in cities under the blight of a besieging army. Private sorrows are more bitter than public suffering. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1200:Nos dirigimos a un mundo distinto decía Cándido; sin duda debe ser allí donde todo está bien. Porque debemos reconocer que en el nuestro existen muchas cosas, en lo físico y en lo moral, que nos pueden hacer llorar. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1201:What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1202:In this country [England] it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. The reference is to Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1757 for failing to prevent the French from taking Minorca. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1203:Joie est mon caractere, C'est la faute a Voltaire; Misere est mon trousseau C'est la faute a Rousseau. [Joy is my character, 'Tis the fault of Voltaire; Misery is my trousseau 'Tis the fault of Rousseau.] - Gavroche ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1204:The Jews are an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1205:beauty is often very relative, just as what is decent in Japan is indecent in Rome, and what is fashionable in Paris, is not fashionable in Pekin; and he saved himself the trouble of composing a long treatise on beauty. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1206: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, #NFDB
1207:I found this quote more relevant today than it was yesterday: 'Man is born to live in the convulsions of anxiety or the lethargy of boredom. Hard work is the final solution - it prevents all of the above.' - Voltaire ~ Shane Joseph, #NFDB
1208: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, #NFDB
1209:But do not you see," answered Martin, "that he likewise dislikes everything he possesses? It was an observation of Plato, long since, that those are not the best stomachs that reject, without distinction, all sorts of food. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1210:Speaking of Newton but also commenting more broadly on education and the Enlightenment: "I have seen a professor of mathematics only because he was great in his vocation, buried like a king who had done well by his subjects. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1211:Alas...I too have known love, that ruler of hearts, that soul of our soul: it's never brought me anything except one kiss and twenty kicks in the rump. How could such a beautiful cause produce such an abominable effect on you? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1212:era uma vez um grão de areia que se lamentava de ser um átomo ignorado do deserto; ao final de alguns anos tornou-se diamente (...). Essas palavras me deixaram impressionado; eu era o grão de areia, resolvi tornar-me diamante. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1213:Ha sido un ejemplo singular de la estupidez humana creer durante mucho tiempo que los judíos constituyeron una nación que había enseñado a todas las demás, cuando su mismo historiador Josefo confiesa que fue todo lo contrario. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1214:If God did not exist, He would have to be invented. But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1215:Men who have seen life and death... as an unbroken continuum, the swinging pendulum, have been able to move as freely into death as they walked through life. Socrates went to the grave almost perplexed by his companions' tears. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1216:The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or dangerous. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1217:Quand celui à qui l'on parle ne comprend pas et celui qui parle ne se comprend pas, c'est de la métaphysique When he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1218:A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, #NFDB
1219:L'âme est un esprit pur, qui a reçu dans le ventre de sa mère toutes les idées métaphysiques et qui, en sortant de là, est obligée d'áller à l'école, et d'apprendre tout de nouveau ce qu'elle a si bien su et qu'elle ne saura plus. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1220:Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
1221:We think we live in a global village. We don't. The world is a big and beautiful and incredibly varied place. It can only be known locally, with your two feet on the ground. We should stick to our own gardens, as Voltaire said. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
1222:ABEJAS . La especie de las abejas es superior a la raza humana en cuanto extrae de su cuerpo una sustancia útil, mientras que todas nuestras secreciones son despreciables y no hay una sola que no haga desagradable al género humano. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1223:Voltaire spoke of the Bible as a short-lived book. He said that within a hundred years it would pass from common use. Not many people read Voltaire today, but his house has been packed with Bibles as a depot of a Bible society. ~ Bruce Barton, #NFDB
1224:Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any expirienced in a town when it is under siege. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1225:It would be very singular that all nature, all the planets, should obey eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal five feet high, who, in contempt of these laws, could act as he pleased, solely according to his caprice. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1226:O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in "the truth," and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely-"il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien"-I wager he finds nothing! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1227:O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in "the truth," and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely—"il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien"—I wager he finds nothing! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1228:In all the disputes which have excited Christians against each other, Rome has invariably decided in favor of that opinion which tended most towards the suppression of the human intellect and the annihilation of the reasoning powers. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1229:Thus the cerebral footings were laid. Voltaire preferred intellectual liberty and enlightened despotism. Montesquieu wanted limited monarchy and a separation of political powers. Rousseau dreamed of an ideal republican commonwealth. ~ Jay Winik, #NFDB
1230:A jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, #NFDB
1231:The Franklin known to the French, the Franklin who had briefly visited Paris in 1767 and 1769 was—in Voltaire’s description—the discoverer of electricity, a man of genius, a first name in science, a successor to Newton and Galileo. ~ Stacy Schiff, #NFDB
1232:Give me a few lines written by any man and I will find enough to get him hung” goes the saying attributed to Richelieu, Voltaire, Talleyrand (a vicious censor during the French revolution phase of terror), and a few others. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
1233:I've had some experience of this love, this love that rules our hearts, which is the soul of our souls; all it got me was a kiss and twenty kicks in the ass. How could so beautiful a cause have produced in you such an abominable effect? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1234:Quand celui à qui l'on parle ne comprend pas et celui qui parle ne se comprend pas, c'est de la métaphysique
When he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1235:He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for reality, and his own imagination for prophesy, is a fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will soon advance to the higher stage and kill men for the love of God. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1236:He was so ill now that a priest came to shrive him. “From whom do you come, M. l’Abbé?” asked Voltaire. “From God Himself,” was the answer. “Well, well, sir,” said Voltaire; “your credentials?”121 The priest went away without his prey. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1237:The wicked can have only accomplices, the voluptuous have companions in debauchery, self-seekers have associates, the politic assemble the factions, the typical idler has connections, princes have courtiers. Only the virtuous have friends. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1238:Which is more dangerous: fanaticism or atheism? Fanaticism is certainly a thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion whereas fanaticism does; atheism is opposed to crime and fanaticism causes crimes to be committed. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1239:Every one should be his own physician. We ought to assist, and not to force nature. Eat with moderation...Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. What medicine can procure digestion? Exercise. What will recruit strength? Sleep. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1240: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, #NFDB
1241:Only cut off a buttock of each of those ladies,' said he,'and you'll fare extremely well; if you must go to it again, there will be the same entertainment a few days hence; heaven will accept of so charitable an action, and send you relief. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1242:So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1243:Just for the sake of amusement, ask each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who hasn’t often cursed his life, who hasn’t told himself he’s the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1244:As to his religious notions—why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. I look for the man who will bring the arsenic, and don't mind about his incantations." "Very ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1245:Joie est mon caractere,
C'est la faute a Voltaire;
Misere est mon trousseau
C'est la faute a Rousseau.
[Joy is my character,
'Tis the fault of Voltaire;
Misery is my trousseau
'Tis the fault of Rousseau.]
- Gavroche ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
1246:If,” said he, “thou hast any humanity, I conjure thee to pay some regard to her beauty and weakness. How canst thou behave in this outrageous manner to one of the masterpieces of nature, who lies at thy feet, and hath no defence but her tears? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1247:mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1248:What can be feared when one is doing one's duty? I know the rage of my enemies. I know all their slanders; but when one only tries to do good to men and when one does not offend heaven, one can fear nothing, neither during life nor after death. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1249:is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which one can always throw down? to detest existence and yet to cling to one's existence? in brief, to caress the serpent which devours us, till he has eaten our very heart? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1250:What Ingersoll, like Voltaire and Paine before him, understood was the indivisibility of human rights, and he understood this not in spite of but precisely because of his disbelief in a deity who had supposedly “designed” the order of nature. ~ Susan Jacoby, #NFDB
1251:When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food, and the joy of living. Tecumseh Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1252:Il est démontré, disait-il, que les choses ne peuvent être autrement; car tout étant fait pour une fin, tout est nécessairement pour la meilleure fin. Remarquez bien que les nez ont été faits pour porter des lunettes; aussi avons-nous des lunettes ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1253: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, #NFDB
1254:Even within single sentences, there are sudden changes of register. And when the travellers go to Venice, they see a play by Voltaire! This is a novel [Candid] which has narratives within narratives, such as when Cunégonde recounts her story. ~ Mark Ravenhill, #NFDB
1255:Having actually read the Voltaire in question, I can confirm the quote is, as different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds,” Nicholas said coldly. “Interesting, though, that in the end we're all just dogs. ~ Alexandra Bracken, #NFDB
1256: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,#NFDB
1257:At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1258:On the whole we must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion; or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and brotherly commiseration. ~ Thomas Carlyle, Essays. Voltaire, #NFDB
1259:The supper was like most Parisian suppers: silence at first, then a burst of unintelligible chatter, then witticisms that were mostly vapid, false rumors, bad reasonings, a little politics and a great deal of slander; they even spoke about new books. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1260:Je fus nommé historiographe de France; et le roi me fit présent d'une charge de gentilhomme ordinaire de sa chambre; je conclus que pour faire la plus petite fortune, il valait mieux dire quatre mots à la maîtresse d'un roi, que d'écrire cent volumes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1261:Epicuro,” Spain interrupted with a firmness that made us all turn, “you don’t want humanity to fail your Great Test because the lot of us, who should be out there shepherding, were stuck here, riveted, listening to you arguing theodicy with Voltaire. ~ Ada Palmer, #NFDB
1262:The atheists are for the most part imprudent and misguided scholars who reason badly who, not being able to understand the Creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis the eternity of things and of inevitability. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1263:He carried me to a neighbouring house, put me to bed, gave me food, waited upon me, consoled me, flattered me; he told me that he had never seen any one so beautiful as I, and that he never so much regretted the loss of what it was impossible to recover. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1264:Learn that there are no basilisks in nature, that people are always healthy with sobriety and exercise, and that the art of making intemperance and health together is as chimerical as the philosopher's stone, judicial astrology, and the theology of magi. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1265:Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1266:We find in them an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched. Still, we ought not to burn them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1267:Algunos doctos sostienen que debemos a los griegos el emblema de los cuernos, porque los griegos designan con la denominación de macho cabrío al esposo de la mujer que es lasciva como una cabra. En efecto, los griegos llaman a los bastardos hijos de cabra. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1268:And ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I give you permission to throw me head-first into the sea. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1269:If the bookseller happens to desire a privilege for his merchandise, whether he is selling Rabelais or the Fathers of the Church, the magistrate grants the privilege without answering for the contents of the book. - Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1270:The Jewish nation dares to display an irreconcilable hatred toward all nations, and revolts against all masters; always superstitious, always greedy for the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous - cringing in misfortune and insolent in prosperity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1271:So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1272:We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1273:A jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. ~ Mikhail Bakunin in "On God and the State", #NFDB
1274:The first, a quote from Voltaire, is contemptuous: “Anything too stupid to be spoken,” he asserted, “is sung.” The second, an adage from the advertising profession, is tactical: “If you can’t make your case to an audience with facts, sing it to them. ~ Robert B Cialdini, #NFDB
1275: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, #NFDB
1276:There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift. ~ Agnes Repplier, #NFDB
1277:Enlightenment writer and philosopher Voltaire likened life to a game of cards. Players must accept the cards dealt to them. However, once they have those cards in hand, they alone choose how they will play them. They decide what risks and actions to take. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1278:Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1279:J'oserais prendre la liberté d'inviter ceux qui sont à la tête du gouvernement, et ceux qui sont destinés aux grandes places, à vouloir bien examiner mûrement si l'on doit craindre en effet que la douceur produise les mêmes révoltes que la cruauté a fait naître. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1280:What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us and hug him close to our bosoms tillhe has gnawed into our hearts? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1281:Custom, law bent my first years to the religion of the happy Muslims. I see it too clearly: the care taken of our childhood forms our feelings, our habits, our belief. By the Ganges I would have been a slave of the false gods, a Christian in Paris, a Muslim here. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1282:Por isso, vos aconselho a que vos distraiais, convidai cada passageiro a contar a sua história; mas se encontrar um só que nunca tenha amaldiçoado a vida e que nunca tenha dito para si mesmo que era o mais infeliz dos homens, deitem-me ao mar de cabeça para baixo! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1283:Dear master," replied Cacambo; "you are surprised at everything. Why should you think it so strange that in some countries there are monkeys which insinuate themselves into the good graces of the ladies; they are a fourth part human, as I am a fourth part Spaniard. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1284:Méret Oppenheim was a very erotic woman. She also liked provocation, and if you could provoke surrealists at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, or similar Dadaist hangouts in Basel, where you could normally get away with these things, you were truly a provocateur. ~ Rebecca Horn, #NFDB
1285:Well now, you will agree that there is the happiest man; for he is above everything he possesses."
"Don't you see?" said Martin, "that he is disgusted with everything he possesses? Plato said a long time ago that the best stomachs are no those which refuse food. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1286:Among the illusions which have invested our civilization is an absolute belief that the solutions to our problems must be a more determined application of rationally organized expertise... The reality is that our problems are largely the product of that application. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1287:That is why all romantics are anti-Voltairean, even Michelet, whose political fervor ought to have made him stand aligned with Voltaire; and that is why, on the other hand, all the minds which accept the world and recognize its irony and indifference are Voltairean. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1288:The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1289:Descartes constructed as noble a road of science, from the point at which he found geometry to that to which he carried it, as Newton himself did after him. ... He carried this spirit of geometry and invention into optics, which under him became a completely new art. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1290:Descartes gave sight to the blind. These saw the errors of antiquity and of the sciences. The path he struck out is since become boundless [....] In fathoming this abyss no bottom has been found. We are now to examine what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has made in it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1291:FANATICISM is, to superstition, what delirium is to fever, and fury to anger : he who has ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities, and imaginations for prophecies, is an enthusiast ; and he, who sticks not at supporting his folly by murder, is a fanatic. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1292:Le cartésien prit la parole, et dit: "L'âme est un esprit pur, qui a reçu dans le ventre de sa mère toutes les idées métaphysiques et qui, en sortant de là, est obligée d'áller à l'école, et d'apprendre tout de nouveau ce qu'elle a si bien su et qu'elle ne saura plus. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1293:The register, the attorneys, and bailiffs, went to his house with great formality to carry him back his four hundred ounces. They only retained three hundred and ninety-eight of them to defray the expenses of justice; and then their servants demanded their fees. Zadig ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1294:Voltaire's novel [Candid] offers us parallel universes, the possibility of entering into alternative worlds existing side by side, and this is something quite modern. Nested narratives and parallel universes are popular at the moment in many different art forms. ~ Mark Ravenhill, #NFDB
1295:A fondness for roving, for making a name for themselves in their onw country, and for boasting of what they had seen in their travels, was so strong in our two wanderers, that they resolved to be no longer happy; and demanded permission of the king to leave the country. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1296:Pangloss taught metaphysico-theologico-cosmo-codology. He could prove wonderfully that there is no effect without a cause and that, in this best of all possible worlds, His Lordship the Baron's castle was the most beautiful of castles and Madam the best of all baronesses. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1297:The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1298:Divert yourself, and ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I give you permission to throw me head-first into the sea. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1299:I leave there, and I say to my husband: "If you are without sin, shave me, imprison me, take my property; but if you have committed more sins than I have, it is for me to shave you, to have you imprisoned, and to seize your fortune. In justice these things should be equal. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1300:It is more likely," said he, "mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty-pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1301: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, #NFDB
1302:Neither the Choice of his Friends, nor that of his Dishes, was the Result of Pride or Ostentation. He took Delight in appearing to be, what he actually was, and not in seeming to be what he was not; and by that Means, got a greater real Character than he actually aim'd at. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1303:After my recent brush with voicelessness, I thought I'd share with you a few thoughts about speech. Don't take it lightly my friends. If music is the pathway to the heart as Voltaire suggested, then speech is the pathway to other people. Live in silence and you live alone. ~ Henry Bromell, #NFDB
1304:But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1305:Do you think... that men have always massacred each other, as they do today? Have they always been liars, cheats, traitors, brigands, weak, flighty, cowardly, envious, gluttonous, drunken, grasping, and vicious, bloody, backbiting, debauched, fanatical, hypocritical, and silly? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1306:Any ironic or irreverent disciple of Voltaire will find it difficult to resist making the obvious remark that, things being what they are, purity can be maintained only so long as there are innocent creatures to sacrifice in this world, whether turtledoves, lambs, or others. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
1307:I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1308: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, #NFDB
1309:WILL-POWER. In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to do it. —W. Humboldt. It is firmness that makes the gods on our side. —Voltaire. Stand firm, don't flutter. —Franklin. People do not lack strength they lack will. —Victor Hugo. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
1310:Just for fun, why not get each passenger to tell you the story of his life, and if there is one single one of them who hasn't often cursed the day he was born and hasn't often said to himself that he was the most unfortunate man alive, then you can throw me into the sea head first. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1311:The son of God is the same as the son of man; the son of man is the same as the son of God. God, the father, is the same as Christ, the son; Christ, the son, is the same as God, the father. This language may appear confused to unbelievers, but Christians will readily understand it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1312:When the Constitution was being written in Philadelphia in 1787, only two decades had passed since the horrifying execution in France of nineteen-year-old Jean-François Lefevre, Chevalier de la Barre, for blasphemy—a case, publicized by Voltaire, that shocked the educated world. ~ Susan Jacoby, #NFDB
1313: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,#NFDB
1314:The Deluge: A punishment inflicted on the human race by an all-knowing God, who, through not having foreseen the wickedness of men, repented of having made them, and drowned them once for all to make them better - an act which, as we all know, was accompanied by the greatest success. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1315:A gente acha que é menos infeliz quando não é infeliz sozinho; mas, segundo Zoroastro, não é por maldade, é por necessidade. A alegria de um homem feliz seria um insulto, mas dois infelizes são como dois arbustos frágeis que, apoiando-se um no outro, se fortalecem contra a tempestade. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1316:Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. But what shall we substitute in its place? you say. What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place ? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1317:Life is a beta. Voltaire said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Google lives the rule as it introduces every new product as a beta. That is Google's way to say that it trusts us to help it finish its products. It is Google's way to open up its design process to our wisdom. ~ Jeff Jarvis, #NFDB
1318:Observe: noses were made to support spectacles, hence we have spectacles. Legs, as anyone can plainly see, were made to be breeched, and so we have breeches. . . . Consequently, those who say everything is well are uttering mere stupidities; they should say everything is for the best. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1319:IN 1710, THE ENGLISH FREETHINKER Thomas Woolston (1670–1731) expressed his confidence that religion would vanish by 1900.1 Voltaire (1695–1778) thought this much too pessimistic and predicted that religion would be gone from the Western world within the next fifty years—by about 1810. ~ Rodney Stark, #NFDB
1320:Voltaire, Kant, Bentham—all assumed that reason could construct morality from scratch. But their moralities did not coincide. Practically speaking, their morality lifted elements, even if unconsciously, from the Judeo-Christian tradition and Greek telos they suggested they had exploded. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
1321:The supper passed at first like most Parisian suppers, in silence, followed by a noise of words which could not be distinguished, then with pleasantries of which most were insipid, with false news, with bad reasoning, a little politics, and much evil speaking; they also discussed new books. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1322:And I think it was a great Frenchman, Voltaire, who said that the beginning of wisdom is the moment when one understands how little concerned with one’s own life are other men, they who are so desperately preoccupied with their own. I knew nothing about you and that boy, nothing at all. ~ William Styron, #NFDB
1323:Los Padres have everything and the people have nothing; 'tis the masterpiece of reason and justice. For my part, I know nothing so divine as Los Padres who make war on Kings of Spain and Portugal and in Europe act as their confessors; who here kill Spaniards and at Madrid send them to Heaven. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1324: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, #NFDB
1325:there is no such thing as chance. All is either a trial, or a punishment, or a reward, or a foresight. Remember the fisherman, who thought himself the most wretched of mankind. Oromazes sent thee to change his fate. Cease then, frail mortal, to dispute against what thou oughtest to adore." "But, ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1326:There is a remarkable nimbleness of style, a balancing act of tone, in Voltaire, which is hard to bring off on stage. When you speak the words out loud, the effect is very different from when you read them. So one needs to do something new with a stage performance, not simply 'tell the story'. ~ Mark Ravenhill, #NFDB
1327:Je n'ai guère vu de ville qui ne désirât la ruine de la ville voisine, point de famille qui ne voulût exterminer quelque autre famille. Partout les faibles ont en exécration les puissants devant lesquels ils rampent, et les puissants les traitent comme des troupeaux dont on vend la laine et la chair. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1328:Voltaire once wrote, “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” Sir Francis Bacon added, “A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.” Indira Gandhi concluded that “the power to question is the basis of all human progress.” Great questions are clearly the quickest path to great answers. ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
1329:Well, there's just some universal truths in a way that I've just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go, there's these observations about romantic love and what it does people, and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other. ~ Feist, #NFDB
1330:Everything I see about me is sowing the seeds of a revolution that is inevitable, though I shall not have the pleasure of seeing it. The lightning is so close at hand that it will strike at the first chance, and then there will be a pretty uproar. The young are fortunate, for they will see fine things. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1331:These two sentiments, "liberty and equality," do not necessarily lead to calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, and devastation of the lands of neighbors; but, the towering ambition and thirst for power of the great precipitate them head-long into every species of crime in all periods and all places. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1332: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,#NFDB
1333:Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1334:A hundred times I have wanted to kill myself, but I was still in love with life. This absurd weakness is perhaps one of our deadliest attachments: can anything be more foolish than to keep carrying a fardel and yet keep wanting to throw it to the ground? To hold one's existence in horror, and yet cling to it? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1335: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, #NFDB
1336:The system of Descartes... seemed to give a plausible reason for all those phenomena; and this reason seemed more just, as it is simple and intelligible to all capacities. But in philosophy, a student ought to doubt of the things he fancies he understands too easily, as much as of those he does not understand. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1337:Voltaire, Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes never had a chance to speak with these men or even know of their existence—and here, at last, we begin to appreciate the enormity of the calamity, for the distintegration of native America was a loss not just to those societies but to the human enterprise as a whole. ~ Charles C Mann, #NFDB
1338:...he inquired into the cause and effect, as well as into the
sufficing reason that had reduced Pangloss to so miserable a condition. “Alas,” replied the preceptor, “it was love; love, the comfort of the human species; love, the preserver of the universe; the soul of all
sensible beings; love! tender love! ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1339:They are the winds," replied the hermit, "that swell the sails of the ship; it is true, they sometimes sink her, but without them she could not sail at all. The bile makes us sick and choleric but without the bile we could not live. Everything in this world is dangerous, and yet everything in it is necessary." The ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1340:We admit, in geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five broad, and six in depth, in the largest heads. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1341:Quizás sea esta absurda debilidad una de nuestras peores inclinaciones: porque ¿hay algo más estúpido que soportar un peso que en todo momento se quiere dejar en el suelo?, ¿odiar la existencia y al mismo tiempo aferrarse a ella?, y en fin, ¿acariciar la serpiente que nos devora hasta que nos haya comido el corazón? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1342:Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
1343:Vendrán de París las modas y los libros; los pasteles de Hungría, la ilustración de Viena; peluqueros a bandadas, cocineros en montón. Se ordenará que los chicos se olviden del español, y que las beatas recen en la lengua de Voltaire, pero sólo la lengua, no la lectura, porque esa seguirá siendo perniciosa. ~ Paco Ignacio Taibo II, #NFDB
1344:Voltaire, Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron, Rousseau... established a new connection between mankind and the universe, and the result was a vast release of energy. The sun was reborn to man and so was the moon. To man, the very sun goes stale, becomes a habit. Comes a saviour, a seer, and the very sun dances new in heaven. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1345:You see, Mademoiselle, I have experience, I know the world. To pass the time, why don't you ask every passenger to tell you his life's story? And if there is a single one among them who has never cursed his life, who has not often told himself that he was the unhappiest of men, then you may throw me overboard, headfirst! ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1346:It is reported in the supplement of the council of Nicæan that the fathers, being very perplexed to know which were the cryphal or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testaments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity that this eloquent procedure has not survived. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1347:For I showed men how they were the cause of their own unhappiness and, in consequence, how they might avoid it’, writes Rousseau to Voltaire in his famous letter on the Lisbon disaster, laying the foundations of a new spirit that desacralizes nature, removing it from divine will and entrusting it to the hands of man. ~ Zygmunt Bauman, #NFDB
1348:Cosa bisogna fare allora?' disse Pangloss.
'Tacere' disse il dervì.
'Speravo' disse Pangloss 'di ragionare un poco con te degli effetti e delle cause, del migliore dei mondi possibili, dell'origine del male, della natura dell'anima e dell'armonia prestabilita.'
A quelle parole il dervì gli sbatté la porta in faccia. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1349:Enfin, Mademoiselle, j'ai de l'expérience, je connais le monde ; donnez-vous un plaisir, engagez chaque passager à vous conter son histoire ; et s'il s'en trouve un seul qui n'ait souvent maudit sa vie, qui ne se soit souvent dit à lui-même qu'il était le plus malheureux des hommes, jetez-moi dans la mer la tête la première. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1350:But, once again," persisted the European, "what state would you choose?" The Brahmin answered: "The state where only the laws are obeyed." "That is an old answer," said the councillor. "It is none the worse for that," said the Brahmin. "Where is that country?" asked the councillor. "We must look for it," answered the Brahmin. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1351: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? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1352:One day he asked a visitor whence he came. “From Mr. Haller’s.” “He is a great man,” said Voltaire; “a great poet, a great naturalist, a great philosopher, almost a universal genius.” “What you say, sir, is the more admirable, as Mr. Haller does not do you the same justice.” “Ah,” said Voltaire, “perhaps we are both mistaken. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1353:Fresh-bearded young men with beautiful skin and long guns on Boulevard Voltaire gazing into the beautiful, disbelieving eyes of their own generation. It wasn’t hatred that killed the innocents but faith, that famished ghost, still revered, even in the mildest quarters. Long ago, someone pronounced groundless certainty a virtue. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
1354:If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him; let us worship God through Jesus if we must - if ignorance has so far prevailed that this name can still be spoken in all seriousness without being taken as a synonym for rapine and carnage. Every sensible man, every honourable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1355:Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
1356:I discovered lots of music; electronic synth bands from the mid-'80s like Depeche Mode, Soft Cell and Cabaret Voltaire. My friends and I used to take two-hour trips to the record store in Newcastle and we started buying copies of The Face and i-D. And then I went to art school and as time progressed, I ended up where I am now. ~ Giles Deacon, #NFDB
1357:It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best program to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action. As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good. ~ James Clear, #NFDB
1358:Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror." "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." "Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense." "If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1359:Perhaps there is nothing greater on earth than the sacrifice of youth and beauty, often of high birth, made by the gentle sex in order to work in hospitals for the relief of human misery, the sight of which is so revolting to our delicacy. Peoples separated from the Roman religion have imitated but imperfectly so generous a charity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1360:Voltaire responded that, on the contrary, vivisection showed that the dog has the same organes de sentiment that a human has. "Answer me, you who believes that animals are only machines," he wrote. "Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all? ~ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, #NFDB
1361:Grace and poise are, because these two attributes precede the opportunity to deploy any other skill. We must possess, as Voltaire once explained about the secret to the great military success of the first Duke of Marlborough, that “tranquil courage in the midst of tumult and serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a cool head. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1362:Toleration is the prerogative of humanity; we are all full of weaknesses and mistakes; let us reciprocally forgive ourselves. It is the first law of nature.
La tolérance, c'est l'apanage de l'humanité; nous sommes tous pétris de faiblesse et d'erreurs; pardonnons-nous réciproquement nos sottises. C'est la première loi de la nature. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1363:French philosopher whom professional philosophers generally accord highest honors is Descartes. Montaigne and Pascal, Voltaire and Rousseau, Bergson and Sartre do not enjoy their greatest vogue among philosophers, and of these only Rousseau has had any considerable influence on the history of philosophy (through Kant and Hegel). ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1364:There are, and always have been, destructive pseudo-scientific notions linked to race and religion; these are the most widespread and damaging. Hopefully, educated people can succeed in shedding light into these areas of prejudice and ignorance, for as Voltaire once said: "Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities." ~ Martin Gardner, #NFDB
1365:Depois do terramoto que destruíra três quartos de Lisboa, os sábios do país não acharam meio mais eficaz de prevenir uma ruína total que oferecer um belo Auto-da-fé; foi decidido pela Universidade de Coimbra que o espetáculo de algumas pessoas queimadas em lume brando, numa grande cerimónia, é um segredo infalível para impedir a terra de tremer. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1366: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, #NFDB
1367:You wore Doc Martens and purple hair. I wore my insecurity on a button-up. it wasn't meant to be.
But then the unthinkable happened. I made you laugh. I can't remember the exact joke, which is surprising given my tendency to endlessly quote myself, but I know we were in English Class and I know it had something to do with Voltaire. ~ Allison Raskin,#NFDB
1368:I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1369:Honest James, forgetting the injury he had so lately received from him, flew to his assistance, and, with great difficulty, hauled him in again, but, in the attempt, was, by a sudden jerk of the ship, thrown overboard himself, in sight of the very fellow whom he had risked his life to save, and who took not the least notice of him in this distress. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1370:I scarce ever knew a city that did not wish the destruction of its neighbouring city, nor a family that did not desire to exterminate some other family. The poor in all parts of the world bear an inveterate hatred to the rich, even while they creep and cringe to them; and the rich treat the poor like sheep, whose wool and flesh they barter for money ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1371:The Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every Sunday that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call Adam. As for me, I do not understand anything of genealogies; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must allow that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1372:Los Padres son dueños de todo y la gente no posée nada; es la obra maestra de la razón y la justicia. Yo no encuentro nada tan extraordinario como los Padres, que aquí luchan contra el rey de España y el de Portugal, y que allí, en Europa, confiesan a esos mismos reyes; que aquí matan españoles, y que en Madrid los envían al cielo: es algo portentoso ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1373:Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” (Cribbed from Voltaire.) A twenty-minute walk that I do is better than the four-mile run that I don’t do. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer. The dinner party of take-out Chinese food is better than the elegant dinner that I never host. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1374:There are barbarians who seize this dog, who so prodigiously surpasses man in friendship, and nail him down to a table, and dissect him alive to show you the mezaraic veins... Answer me, Machinist, has Nature really arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may be incapable of suffering? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1375:Even if that statement was ambiguous, we kind of wanted to cause a stir. We thought that by having the name "Cabaret Voltaire", that with it came a certain responsibility. It wasn't meant to be purely entertainment; it was meant to be something a little bit more serious - and to provoke people - wrapped within an outer wrapping of entertainment. ~ Stephen Mallinder, #NFDB
1376:I have been in several provinces of that
kingdom. In some, one half of the people are fools and madmen; in some, they are too artful; in others, again, they are, in general, either very good–natured or very brutal; while in others, they affect to be witty, and in all, their ruling passion is love, the next is slander, and the last is to talk nonsense. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1377:Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. So said Voltaire, the realist.” “You agree with that?” “Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn’t fear boundaries, but you also should not be afraid of destroying them. That’s what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1378:A great work must be novel without being far-fetched, frequently sublime, but always natural. The author must know the human heart, and how to make it speak; he must be a poet, without letting any of his characters speak like poets; and he must be a master of his language, using it purely and harmoniously and not letting the rhyme interfere with the sense. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1379:Questa ridicola debolezza è forse una delle nostre inclinazioni più funeste: c'è qualcosa di più sciocco del voler portare continuamente un fardello che vorremmo sempre gettare a terra? Di avere orrore della propria esistenza e di tenersi aggrappati alla propria esistenza? Insomma di accarezzare il serpente che ci divora, finché ci abbia mangiato il cuore? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1380:Priests, kings, statesmen, soldiers, bankers and public functionaries of all sorts; policemen, jailers and hangmen; capitalists, usurers, businessmen and property-owners; lawyers, economists and politicians - all of them, down to the meanest grocer, repeat in chorus the words of Voltaire, that if there were no God it would be necessary to invent Him. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, #NFDB
1381:Human reason is so little able, merely by its own strength, to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, that it was absolutely necessary religion should reveal it to us. It is of advantage to society in general, that mankind should believe the soul to be immortal; faith commands us to do this; nothing more is required, and the matter is cleared up at once. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1382:Voltaire remarked that it is possible to kill a flock of sheep by witchcraft if you give them plenty of arsenic at the same time. The sheep, in this figure, may well stand for the complacent apologists of capitalism; Marx's penetrating insight and bitter hatred of oppression supply the arsenic, while the labour theory of value provides the incantations. ~ Joan Robinson, #NFDB
1383:What! my lord," cried the fisherman, "and art thou then so unhappy, thou who bestowest favors?" "A hundred times more unhappy than thee," replied Zadig. "But how is it possible," said the good man, "that the giver can be more wretched than the receiver?" "Because," replied Zadig, "thy greatest misery arose from poverty, and mine is seated in the heart." "Did ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1384:Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer. ~ If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him. ~ Voltaire, Epitre à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs, CXI. See Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire, Volume I, p. 1076. Ed. Didot, 1827. Also in letter to Frederick, Prince Royal of Prussia ~ cf. Cicero, Dii immortales ad usum hominum fabricati pene videantur., #NFDB
1385:Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at bottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the popular mind that bad habit of being suspicious, the Church of France seems to have realised that books are its real enemies. ~ Stendhal, #NFDB
1386: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. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1387:In short, Miss Cunegonde, I have had experience, I know the world; therefore I advise you to divert yourself, and prevail upon each passenger to tell his story; and if there be one of them all, that has not cursed his life many a time, that has not frequently looked upon himself as the unhappiest of mortals, I give you leave to throw me headforemost into the sea. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1388:Behavior that Christians would never support in any other context suddenly becomes perfectly acceptable, even praiseworthy, simply because the state has declared that a war is under way. (That’s what Voltaire meant when he said, “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”) ~ Thomas E Woods Jr, #NFDB
1389:It does not require great art, or magnificently trained eloquence, to prove that Christians should tolerate each other. I, however, am going further: I say that we should regard all men as our brothers. What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? The Siam? Yes, without doubt; are we not all children of the same father and creatures of the same God? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1390:The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1391:I exist, I think, I feel pain. Is all this as certain as a geometric truth? Yes. Why? It is because these truths are proved by the same principle that a thing cannot be and not be at the same thime. I cannot at the same time exist and not exist, feel and not feel. A triangle cannot at the same time have and not have 180 degrees, which is the sum of two right angles. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1392:I have but nothing to say to young girls. They're fine to look at, in the way I would look at a case filled with Shang dynasty glazes, but expecting to carry on a conversation with the average teen-aged young lady is akin to reading Voltaire to a cage filled with chimpanzees. I'm certain they would feel the same alienation for me. I can live with that knowledge. ~ Harlan Ellison, #NFDB
1393:I remind myself, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” (Cribbed from Voltaire.) A twenty-minute walk that I do is better than the four-mile run that I don’t do. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer. The dinner party of take-out Chinese food is better than the elegant dinner that I never host. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1394:He assembled at his house the most worthy men, and the most beautiful ladies of Babylon. He gave them delicious suppers, often preceded by concerts of music, and always animated by polite conversation, from which he knew how to banish that affectation of wit, which is the surest method of preventing it entirely, and of spoiling the pleasure of the most agreeable society. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1395:I've wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but I still love life. That ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most pernicious inclinations. What could be more stupid than to persist in carrying a burden that we constantly want to cast off, to hold our existence in horror, yet cling to it nonetheless, to fondle the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten our heart? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1396:Our character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: and, since it has been proved that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas, our character does not depend on us. If it did depend on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect. If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1397:A quel bel discorso, Candido, l’essere il più dolce della natura, benchè avesse ammazzato tre uomini, due de’ quali erano preti, non fece parola, ma annojato del dottore e della società, il giorno appresso con una canna in mano, se ne fuggì, senza saper dove, cercando in luogo ov’ei non s’annojasse, e dove gli uomini non fossero uomini, come nel buon paese d’Eldorado. Candido ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1398:Men must have somewhat altered the course of nature; for they were not born wolves, yet they have become wolves. God did not give them twenty-four-pounders or bayonets, yet they have made themselves bayonets and guns to destroy each other. In the same category I place not only bankruptcies, but the law which carries off the bankrupts’ effects, so as to defraud their creditors. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1399:After the earthquake had destroyed three-fourths of Lisbon, the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to prevent utter ruin than to give the people a beautiful auto-da-fe; for it had been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible secret to hinder the earth from quaking. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1400:It needs twenty years to lead man from the plant state in which he is within his mother's womb, and the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of the reason begins to appear. It has needed thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1401:I tried to believe in God, but I confess to you that God meant nothing in my life, and that in my secret heart I too felt a void where my childhood faith had been. But probably this feeling belongs only to individuals in transition. The grandchildren of these pessimists will frolic in the freedom of their lives, and have more happiness than poor Christians darkened with fear of Hell. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1402:It's a terrible thing, what we did,” said Francis abruptly. “I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It’s a shame. I feel bad about it.”
“Well, of course, I do too,” said Henry matter-of-factly. “But not bad enough to want to go to jail for it.”
Francis snorted and poured himself another shot of whiskey and drank it straight off. “No,” he said. “Not that bad. ~ Donna Tartt,#NFDB
1403: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, #NFDB
1404: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,#NFDB
1405:The Apology (of Socrates) is Plato's version of the speech given by Socrates as he defends himself against the charges of being a man "who corrupted the young, did not believe in the gods, and created new deities". "Apology" here has its earlier meaning (now usually expressed by the word "apologia") of speaking in defense of a cause or of one's beliefs or actions (from the Greek απολογία). ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1406:while the earth, which in reality is only an imperceptible point in nature, appears to our fond imaginations as something so grand and noble. He then represented to himself the human species, as it really is, as a parcel of insects devouring one another on a little atom of clay. This true image seemed to annihilate his misfortunes, by making him sensible of the nothingness of his own being ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1407:Voltaire,” says M. Guizot, “was the first person in France who spoke of Shakespeare’s genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbarian genius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too much in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to apply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crude as they were coarse. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1408:Pangloss explained to him how everything was so constituted that it could not be better. James was not of this opinion. "It is more likely," said he, "mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1409:An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction is always to have something to do.
Creech, the commentator on Lucretius, marked upon his manuscripts: “N. B. Must hang myself when I have finished.” He kept his word with himself that he might have the pleasure of ending like his author. If he had undertaken a commentary upon Ovid he would have lived longer. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1410:Je voulus cent fois me tuer, mais j'aimais encore la vie. Cette faiblesse ridicule est peut-être un de nos penchants les plus funestes : car y a-t-il rien de plus sot que de vouloir porter continuellement un fardeau qu'on veut toujours jeter par terre ? D'avoir son être en horreur, et de tenir à son être ? Enfin de caresser le serpent qui nous dévore, jusqu'à ce qu'il nous ait mangé le cœur ? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1411:Unsere Bibliotheken sind sozusagen Strafanstalten, in welche wir unsere Geistesgrößen eingesperrt haben, Kant naturgemäß in eine Einzelzelle wie Nietzsche, wie Schopenhauer, wie Pascal, wie Voltaire, wie Montaigne, alle ganz großen in Einzelzellen, alle andern in Massenzellen, aber alle für immer und ewig, mein Lieber, für alle Zeit und in die Unendlichkeit hinein, das ist die Wahrheit. ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
1412:Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don’t tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night. ~ Yuval Noah Harari, #NFDB
1413:Não há nem duas folhas de árvore na terra, nem dois globos nos campos infinitos do céu que sejam semelhantes, e tudo o que vês sobre o pequeno átomo em que nasceste devia estar em seu lugar em seu tempo fixo, segundo as ordens imutáveis daquele que tudo abrange. (...) não há acaso: tudo é prova, ou punição, ou recompensa, ou providência. (...) Pára de argumentar contra aquilo que se deve adorar. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1414:the doves, as we know, must be killed according to the law before Mary’s purification can be acknowledged and ratified. Any ironic or irreverent disciple of Voltaire will find it difficult to resist making the obvious remark that, things being what they are, purity can be maintained only so long as there are innocent creatures to sacrifice in this world, whether turtledoves, lambs, or others. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
1415:Je voudrais que vous écrasassiez l'infâme. ~ I wish that you would crush this infamy. ~ Voltaire to D'Alembert June 23, 1760. Attributed to Voltaire by Abbé Barruch—Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism. Generally quoted "Écrasez l'infâme." A. De Morgan contends that the popular idea that it refers to God is incorrect. It refers probably to the Roman Catholic Church, or the traditions in the church., #NFDB
1416:Euler calculated the force of the wheels necessary to raise the water in a reservoir … My mill was carried out geometrically and could not raise a drop of water fifty yards from the reservoir. Vanity of vanities! Vanity of geometry! ~ Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 221 from Frederick to Voltaire, 25 November 1777., #NFDB
1417:I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, - astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc... It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1418:"If God did not exist, He would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it. ~ Voltaire quoting himself in a letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (28 November 1770), as quoted in Voltaire in His Letters (1919) by S. G. Tallentyre (Evelyn Beatrice Hall), #NFDB
1419:It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1420:A hundred times I was upon the point of killing myself; but still I loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics; for is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which one can always throw down? to detest existence and yet to cling to one's existence? in brief, to caress the serpent which devours us, till he has eaten our very heart? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1421:A hundred times I was upon the point of killing myself; but still I loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics; for is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which one can always throw down? to detest existence and yet to cling to one’s existence? in brief, to caress the serpent which devours us, till he has eaten our very heart? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1422:Quise suicidarme
montones de veces, pero a pesar de todo amaba la vida. Quizás sea esta absurda
debilidad una de nuestras peores inclinaciones: porque ¿hay algo más estúpido que
soportar un peso que en todo momento se quiere dejar en el suelo?, ¿odiar la
existencia y al mismo tiempo aferrarse a ella?, y en fin, ¿acariciar la serpiente que nos
devora hasta que nos haya comido el corazón? ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1423:De o sută de ori am vrut să mă omor, dar n-am putut deoarece îmi plăcea încă viaţa. Slăbiciunea asta ridicolă e poate una din aplecările noastre cele mai nenorocite; este oare ceva mai prost pe lume decât să vrei să duci într-una o povară pe care în orice clipă ai vrea s-o arunci, să-ţi fie scârbă de fiinţa ta şi totuşi să ţii mereu la ea, să dezmierdăm şarpele care ne roade până când ne înghite inima? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1424:I have been a hundred times on the point of killing myself, but still was fond of life. The ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts. What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us, and hug him close to our bosoms till he has gnawed into our hearts? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1425:The closest that either Voltaire or the other historical geniuses of the age -- Hume and Gibbon -- came to understanding unreason's creative potentialities was in their Ironic criticism of themselves and in their own efforts to make sense out of history. This, at least, led them to view themselves as being as potentially flawed as the cripples they conceived to be acting out the spectacle of history. ~ Hayden White, #NFDB
1426:I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1427:After the earthquake, which had destroyed three–fourths of the city of Lisbon, the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to preserve the kingdom from utter ruin than to entertain the people with an auto–da–fe, it having been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible preventive of earthquakes. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1428: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,#NFDB
1429:Mi chiedo se Averroè, Kant, Socrate, Newton, Voltaire avrebbero mai creduto che nel Ventesimo secolo la piaga delle città, l'avvelenatore dei polmoni, l'omicida di massa, l'oggetto di culto sarebbe diventato un carrello di lamiera con le ruote e che le persone avrebbero preferito morire schiantate al suo interno durante gli esodi di massa per i fine settimana, anzichè restarsene tranquillamente a casa. ~ Stanis aw Lem, #NFDB
1430:What then is human life? O virtue, how hast thou served me? Two women have basely deceived me; and now a third, who is innocent, and more beautiful than both the others, is going to be put to death! Whatever good I have done hath been to me a continual source of calamity and affliction; and I have only been raised to the height of grandeur, to be tumbled down the most horrid precipice of misfortune." Filled ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1431:Let us therefore reject all superstition in order to become more human; but in speaking against fanaticism, let us not imitate the fanatics: they are sick men in delirium who want to chastise their doctors. Let us assuage their ills, and never embitter them, and let us pour drop by drop into their souls the divine balm of toleration, which they would reject with horror if it were offered to them all at once. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1432:Our libraries are so to speak prisons where we've locked up our intellectual giants, naturally Kant has been put in solitary confinement, like Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, like Pascal, like Voltaire, like Montaigne, all the real giants have been put in solitary confinement, all the others in mass confinement, but everyone for ever and ever, my friend, for all time and unto eternity, that's the truth. ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
1433:There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1434:Voltaire wrote, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”188 Steve Jobs told the Macintosh team that “real artists ship.”189 New ideas are never perfect right out of the chute, and you don’t have time to wait until they get there. Create a product, ship it, see how it does, design and implement improvements, and push it back out. Ship and iterate. The companies that are the fastest at this process will win. ~ Eric Schmidt, #NFDB
1435: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,#NFDB
1436:Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. ~ Attributed to Voltaire; in Tryon Edwards, Dictionary of Thoughts (1891), p. 392. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)., #NFDB
1437:I have been a hundred times on the point of killing myself, but still was fond of life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts. What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us, and hug him close to our bosoms till he has gnawed into our hearts? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1438:Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau! Mock on, mock on: 'Tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again. And every sand becomes a gem Reflected in the beams divine; Blown back they blind the mocking eye, But still in Israel's paths they shine. The atoms of Democritus And Newton's particles of light Are sands upon the Red Sea shore, Where Israel's tents do shine so bright. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
1439:Zadig dirigeait sa route sur les étoiles... Il admirait ces vastes globes de lumière qui ne paraissent que de faibles étincelles à nos yeux, tandis que la terre, qui n'est en effet qu'un point imperceptible dans la nature, paraît à notre cupidité quelque chose de si grand et de si noble. Il se figurait alors les hommes tels qu'ils sont en effet, des insectes se dévorant les uns les autres sur un petit atome de boue. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1440:All political philosophy, Spinoza thins, must grow out of a distinction between the natural and the moral order...without law or social organization...might and right were one...The "rights" of states are now what the "rights" of individuals used to be (and still often are), that is, they are mights...among men, as mutual need begets mutual aid...passes into a moral order of rights. (Chapter on Voltaire, p.191/543) ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1441:Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will....The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1442:The puritanism of Christianity has played havoc with the moderation that an enlightened and tolerant critical spirit would have produced. I've noticed that in whatever country, county, town, or other region there is a regulation enjoining temperance, the population seems to be entirely composed of teetotallers and drunkards. There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1443:Havia então na Arábia um costume medonho, originário da Cítia, e que, estabelecido na Índia por influência dos brâmames, ameaçava invadir todo o Oriente. Quando morria um homem casado, e sua amada esposa desejava ser santa, ela se queimava em público sobre o corpo de seu marido. Era uma festa solene que se chamava 'A fogueira da viuvez'. A tribo em que houvesse mais mulheres queimadas vivas era a mais considerada de todas. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1444:As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing. ~ Frederick the Great, Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 221 from Frederick to Voltaire, 25 November 1777., #NFDB
1445:Perhaps, if I use my reason in good faith, I may suceed in discovering some ray of probability to lighten me in the dark night of nature. And if this faint dawn which I seek does not come to me, I shall be consoled to think that my ignorance is invincible; that knowledge which is forbidden me is assuredly useless to me; and that the great Being will not punish me for having sought a knowledge of him and failed to obtain it. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1446:Before receiving your instruction, I must tell you what happened to me one day. I had just had a closet built at the end of my garden. I heard a mole arguing with a cockchafer; 'Here's a fine structure,' said the mole, 'it must have been a very powerful mole who did this work.' 'You're joking,' said the cockchafer; 'it's a cockchafer full of genius who is the architect of this building.' From that moment I resolved never to argue. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1447:I had a veritable rnania for finishing whatever I began, which often got me into difficulties. On one occasion I started to read the works of Voltaire when I learned, to my dismay, that there were close on one hundred large volumes in small print which that monster had written while drinking seventy-two cups of black coffee per diem. It had to be done, but when I laid aside the last book I was very glad, and said, “Never more! ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
1448:L'Ingénu, selon sa coutume, s'éveilla avec le soleil, au chant du coq, qu'on appelle en Angleterre et en Huronie la trompette du jour. Il n'était pas comme la bonne compagnie, qui languit dans un lit oiseux jusqu'à ce que le soleil ait fait la moitié de son tour, qui ne peut ni dormir ni se lever, qui perd tant d'heures précieuses dans cet état mitoyen entre la vie et la mort, et qui se plaint encore que la vie est trop courte. Il ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1449: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, #NFDB
1450:There isn’t an equation that can confirm something as self-evident (to us humans) as “muggy weather is uncomfortable” or “mothers are older than their daughters.” There has been some progress made in translating this sort of information into mathematical logic, but to catalog the common sense of a four-year-old child would require hundreds of millions of lines of computer code. As Voltaire once said, “Common sense is not so common. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
1451:What is the verdict of the vastest mind?
Silence: the book of fate is closed to us.
Man is a stranger to his own research;
He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes.
Tormented atoms in a bed of mud,
Devoured by death, a mockery of fate.
But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes,
Guided by thought, have measured the faint stars,
Our being mingles with the infinite;
Ourselves we never see, or come to know. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1452:The age-long history of thinking on gravitation, too, was erased from the collective consciousness, and that force somehow became the serendipitous child of Newton's genius. The new attitude is well illustrated by the anecdote of the apple, a legend spread by Voltaire, one of the most active and vehement erasers of the past. ... The need to build the myth of an ex nihilo creation of modern science gave rise to much impassioned rhetoric. ~ Lucio Russo, #NFDB
1453:Clearly,” I said, “we should choose not to have good sense, if that good sense contributes to our misery.”
Everyone agreed with me, and yet I found no one who wanted to accept the bargain of becoming ignorant in order to become content. From this I concluded that though we greatly value happiness, we place even greater value on reason.
But yet, upon reflection, it seems that to prefer reason to happiness is to be quite insane. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1454:I confess that my stomach does not take to this style of cooking. I cannot accept calves sweetbreads swimming in a salty sauce, nor can I eat mince consisting of turkey, hare, and rabbit, which they try to persuade me comes from a single animal... As for the cooks, I really cannot be expected to put up with this ham essence, nor the excessive quantity of morels and other mushrooms, pepper, and nutmeg with which they disguise perfectly good food. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1455:There are, and always have been, destructive pseudo-scientific notions linked to race and religion; these are the most widespread and damaging. Hopefully, educated people can succeed in shedding light into these areas of prejudice and ignorance, for as Voltaire once said: 'Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities. ~ Martin Gardner, #NFDB
1456:I am ignorant of how I was formed and how I was born. Through a quarter of my lifetime I was absolutely ignorant of the reasons for everything I saw and heard and felt, and was merely a parrot prompted by other parrots... When I sought to advance along that infinite course, I could neither find one single footpath or fully discover one single object, and from the upward leap I made to contemplate eternity I fell back into the abyss of my ignorance. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1457: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, #NFDB
1458: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,#NFDB
1459:People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1460: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, #NFDB
1461:Father," said Zadig, "what's all this I see? You seem in no way like other men: you steal a golden basin studded with precious stones from a lord who receives you magnificently, and you give it to another who treats you with indignity."
"My son," replied the old man, " that magnificent man, who revieves strangers only out of vanity and to have his riches admired, will become wiser; the miser will learn to exercise hospitality. Be astonished at nothing, and follow me. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1462: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, #NFDB
1463:Strange as it may seem, the churches as churches have always been, and cannot but be, institutions not only alien in spirit to Christ's teaching, but even directly antagonistic to it. With good reason Voltaire calls the Church l'infâme; with good reason have all or almost all so-called sects of Christians recognized the Church as the scarlet woman foretold in the Apocalypse; with good reason is the history of the Church the history of the greatest cruelties and horrors. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1464:Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches. Stones were formed to be quarried and to build castles; and My Lord has a very noble castle; the greatest Baron in the province should have the best house; and as pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round; consequently, those who have asserted all is well talk nonsense; they ought to have said that all is for the best. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1465:The Treatise of the Three Impostors is a book that enjoyed centuries of notorious nonexistence until (as Voltaire would say) it became necessary to invent it. Georges Minois writes with empathy, erudition, and a novelist's sense of buildup and timing, weaving in the parallel story of Europe's courageous freethinkers. In the face of today's social and even legal pressures against criticizing religion, it is good to see an honorable French tradition asserting itself. ~ Joscelyn Godwin, #NFDB
1466:It is as I say, War was the fire beneath the boiling pot, unleashing those atavistic fumes, pulling back that slight and insecure lid called civilization. Rousseau was right: Savagery is not to be found in far off exotic places but in our own recondite depths. At the slightest excuse the savage in us will come storming out to the fore, bowling down the civilized part like a cannonball. - Not that Voltaire ever understood, that insufferable dandy" Victus - Book 3 ~ Albert S nchez Pi ol, #NFDB
1467:I already began to inspire the men with love. My breast began to take its right form, and such a breast! white, firm, and formed like that of the Venus de' Medici; my eyebrows were as black as jet, and as for my eyes, they darted flames and eclipsed the luster of the stars, as I was told by the poets of our part of the world. My maids, when they dressed and undressed me, used to fall into an ecstasy in viewing me before and behind; and all the men longed to be in their places. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1468:The very essence of things is totally changed. You neither are agreed upon the definition of the soul nor on that of matter. Descartes, as I observed in my last, maintains that the soul is the same thing with thought, and Mr. Locke has given a pretty good proof of the contrary. Descartes asserts farther, that extension alone constitutes matter, but Sir Isaac adds solidity to it. How furiously contradictory are these opinions! Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites (Virgil). ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1469:–Amiguito –le dijo el orador– ¿crees que el Papa es el anticristo?
–Nunca lo había oído –respondió Cándido–; pero séalo o no, yo no tengo pan que comer.
–Ni lo mereces –replicó el otro–; anda, bribón, anda, miserable, y que no te vuelva a ver en mi vida.
Se asomó en esto a la ventana la mujer del ministro, y viendo a uno que dudaba de que el Papa fuera el anticristo, le tiró a la cabeza un vaso lleno de… ¡Oh, cielos, a qué excesos se entregan las damas por celo religioso! ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1470:Accordingly, France Had Voltaire, and his school of negative thinkers, and England (or rather Scotland) had the profoundest negative thinker on record, David Hume: a man, the peculiarities of whose mind qualified him to detect failure of proof, and want of logical consistency, at a depth which French skeptics, with their comparatively feeble powers of analysis and abstractions stop far short of, and which German subtlety alone could thoroughly appreciate, or hope to rival. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1471:Anyhow, the criterion of common sense was never applicable to the history of the human race. Averroës, Kant, Socrates, Newton, Voltaire, could any of them have believed it possible that in the twentieth century the scourge of cities, the poisoner of lungs, the mass murderer and idol of millions would be a metal receptacle on wheels, and that people would actually prefer being crushed to death inside it during frantic weekends exoduses instead of staying, safe and sound, at home? ~ Stanis aw Lem, #NFDB
1472:I do not know by what power I think; but well I know that I should never have thought without the assistance of my senses. That there are immaterial and intelligent substances I do not at all doubt; but that it is impossible for God to communicate the faculty of thinking to matter, I doubt very much. I revere the Eternal Power, to which it would ill become me to prescribe bounds. I affirm nothing, and am contented to believe that many things are possible than are usually thought so". ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1473:The being of God is so comfortable, so convenient, so necessary to the felicity of Mankind, that, (as Tully admirably says) Dii immortales ad usum hominum fabricati pene videantur, if God were not a necessary being of himself, he might almost seem to be made on purpose for the use and benefit of men. ~ Archbishop Tillotson, Works, Sermon 93, Volume I, (1712 edition), p. 696; this is the probable origin of Voltaire's phrase. ~ Cicero's phrase from De legibus in fact references "gods" in the plural, #NFDB
1474:There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is. Such an one was Voltaire, of whom it was epigrammatically said: "he expressed everybody's thoughts better than anyone." But there are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day and magically reflect the future. They express the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three centuries after them. Such as one was Descartes. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
1475:Vain labour for me — vain labour almost for the grave English language — to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from lip to lip. The favourite theme was the superiority of the moderns to the ancients. Condorcet on this head was eloquent, and to some, at least, of his audience, most convincing. That Voltaire was greater than Homer few there were disposed to deny. Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull pedantry which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton, #NFDB
1476:At a great distance appeared with the same pomp the sheep of Thebes, the dog of Bubastis, the cat of Phoebe, the crocodile of Arsinoe, the goat of Mendes, and all the inferior gods of Egypt, who came to pay homage to the great ox, to the mighty Apis, as powerful as Isis, Osiris, and Horus, united together.
In the midst of the demi-gods, forty priests carried an enormous basket, filled with sacred onions. These were, it is true, gods, but they resembled onions very much.
("The White Bull") ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1477:The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors.... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done! ~ Frederick Douglass, #NFDB
1478: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,#NFDB
1479:When Rousseau sent to Voltaire his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, with its arguments against civilization...Voltaire replied: "I have received, sir, you new book against the human species, and I thank you for it... No one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into brutes; to read your book makes one long to go on all fours. As, however it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfortunately impossible for me to resume it." (Chapter on Voltaire, p.247/543) ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1480:The so-called intellectual consumes himself in what he considers pathbreaking work and in the end has only succeeded in making himself ridiculous, whether he’s called Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, it doesn’t matter, even if he was Kleist or Voltaire we still see a pitiful being who has misused his head and finally driven himself into nonsense. Who’s been rolled over and passed over by history. We’ve locked up the great thinkers in our bookcases, from which they keep staring at us, sentenced to eternal ridicule, he said, I ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
1481:Shall I not render a service to men in speaking to them only of morality? This morality is so pure, so holy, so universal, so clear, so ancient, that it seems to come from God himself, like the light which we regard as the first of his works. Has he not given men self-love to secure their preservation; benevolence, beneficence, and virtue to control their self-love; the natural need to form a society; pleasure to enjoy, pain to warn us to enjoy in moderation, passions to spur us to great deeds, and wisdom to curb our passions? ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1482: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, #NFDB
1483:To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and a straight line and I will show you how far I can take them. Voltaire himself might have invented the bicycle, since it contributes so much to man’s welfare and nothing at all to his bane. Beneficial to the health, it emits no harmful fumes and permits only the most decorous speeds. How can a bicycle ever be an implement of harm? ~ Angela Carter, #NFDB
1484: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,#NFDB
1485: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, #NFDB
1486:It is evident that most of what we think of as our medieval ancestors’ barbaric practices were based on mistaken beliefs about how the laws of nature actually operate. If you—and everyone around you, including ecclesiastical and political authorities—truly believe that witches cause disease, crop failures, sickness, catastrophes, and accidents, then it is not only a rational act to burn witches, it is also a moral duty. This is what Voltaire meant when he wrote that people who believe absurdities are more likely to commit atrocities. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
1487:One entry was entitled: "About God":
"This thought has been ascribed to Voltaire: If God did not exist, mankind would have invented Him. I find more truth in the reverse: If there really is a God, then we should seek to forget Him, to raise up men who will to do good for goodness' sake, not out of fear of punishment for their bad deeds. How can someone give alms to a poor man with a clean heart when he believes, and has an interest in believing, that there is a God who keeps score in heaven, who looks down and nods in approval? ~ Henrik Pontoppidan,#NFDB
1488:Vous avez joué au ballon, et vous avez été sobre, lui dit Zadig: apprenez qu'il n'y a point de basilic dans la nature, qu'on se porte toujours bien avec de la sobriété et de l'exercice, et que l'art de faire subsister ensemble l'intempérance et la santé est un art aussi chimérique que la pierre philosophale, l'astrologie judiciaire, et la théologie des mages.
Le premier médecin d'Ogul, sentant combien cet homme était dangereux pour la médecine, s'unit avec l'apothicaire du corps pour envoyer Zadig chercher des basilics dans l'autre monde. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1489:Je conclurais au contraire, donc il y a un Dieu, qui après cette vie passagere, dans laquelle nous l'avons tant méconnu, & tant commis de crimes en son nom, daignera nous consoler de tant d'horribles malheurs; car à considérer les guerres de Religion, les quarante schismes des Papes, qui ont presque tous été sanglants, 80 les impostures qui ont presque toutes été funestes, les haines irréconciliables allumées par les différentes opinions, à voir tous les maux qu'a produit le faux zele, les hommes ont eu long-temps leur enfer dans cette vie. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1490: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, #NFDB
1491:Everything happens through immutable laws, ...everything is necessary... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1492:I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, - astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indian and Chinese peoples were civilised and learned, to dispute their antiquity. . . . It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry. . . . But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1493: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, #NFDB
1494: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, #NFDB
1495:... he then eyed our two celestial inhabitants from top to toe, and maintained to their faces, that their persons, their worlds, their suns, their stars, all were made solely for the convenience of man. At this monstrous assertion, our two travelers could not help rolling upon one another in endeavoring to stifle that inextinguishable laughter ... The Sirian took up the ludicrous little mites again, and spoke to them with renewed affability, although at the bottom he was very mortified to find that if these creatures were infinitely small, their pride was infinitely great. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1496:Voltaire rejects all systems, and suspects that “every chief of a sect in philosophy has been a little of a quack.”
“The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers what novels are for women.”
“It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will."
"Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one. ~ Will Durant,#NFDB
1497: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 the 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."
-from "The Life of a Stupid Man ~ Ry nosuke Akutagawa,#NFDB
1498: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, #NFDB
1499:It is more likely,” said he, “mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another. Into this account I might throw not only bankrupts, but Justice which seizes on the effects of bankrupts to cheat the creditors.” “All this was indispensable,” replied the one-eyed doctor, “for private misfortunes make the general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are the greater is the general good. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1500:Le Sirien reprit les petites mites, il leur parla encore avec beaucoup de bonté, quoiqu’il fût un peu fâché dans le fond du cœur de voir que les infiniment petits eussent un orgueil presque infiniment grand. Il leur promit de leur faire un beau livre de philosophie, écrit fort menu pour leur usage, et que, dans ce livre, ils verraient le bout des choses. Effectivement, il leur donna ce volume avant son départ : on le porta à Paris à l’académie des sciences ; mais, quand le vieux secrétaire l’eut ouvert, il ne vit rien qu’un livre tout blanc : « Ah ! dit-il, je m’en étais bien douté. » ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
11 Integral Yoga
2 Poetry
2 Fiction
1 Psychology
1 Occultism
1 Alchemy
8 Nolini Kanta Gupta
4 Sri Aurobindo
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
2 The Secret Doctrine
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, in order to understand the new orientation of the spirit of the present age, we may profitably ask what was the inspiration of the past age, the characteristic note which has failed to satisfy us and which we are endeavouring to transform. We know that that age was the Scientific age or the age of Reason. Its great prophets were Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists or if you mount further up in time, we may begin from Bacon and the humanists. Its motto was first, "The proper study of mankind is man" and secondly, Reason is the supreme organon of knowledge, the highest deity in manla Desse Raison. And it is precisely against these two basic principles that the new age has entered its protest. In face of Humanism, Nietzsche has posited the Superman and in face of Reason Bergson has posited Intuition.
The worship of man as something essentially and exclusively human necessitates as a corollary, the other doctrine, viz the deification of Reason; and vice versa. Humanism and Scientism go together and the whole spirit and mentality of the age that is passing may be summed up in those two words. So Nietzsche says, "All our modern world is captured in the net of the Alexandrine culture and has, for its ideal, the theoretical man, armed with the most powerful instruments of knowledge, toiling in the service of science and whose prototype and original ancestor is Socrates." Indeed, it may be generally asserted that the nation whose prophet and sage claimed to have brought down Philosophia from heaven to dwell upon earth among men was precisely the nation, endowed with a clear and logical intellect, that was the very embodiment of rationality and reasonableness. As a matter of fact, it would not be far, wrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been moulding humanity for ages; at least, it is this which has been the predominating factor, the vital and dynamic element in man's nature. Greece when it died was reborn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world and humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has been another leaven which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented mind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected that which transcends the mind the spirit, the Gods and the Beyonds.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But the Yogi is a wholly conscious being; a perfect Yogi is he who possesses a conscious and willed control over his instruments, he silences them, as and when he likes, and makes them convey and express with as little deviation as possible truths and realities from the Beyond. Now the question is, is it possible for the poet also to do something like that, to consciously create and not to be a mere unconscious or helpless channel? Conscious artistry, as we have said, means to be conscious on two levels of consciousness at the same time, to be at home in both equally and simultaneously. The general experience, however, is that of "one at a time": if the artist dwells more in the one, the other retires into the background to the same measure. If he is in the over-consciousness, he is only half-conscious in his brain consciousness, or even not conscious at allhe does not know how he has created, the sources or process of his creative activity, he is quite oblivious of them" gone through them all as if per saltum. Such seems to have been the case with the primitives, as they are called, the elemental poetsShakespeare and Homer and Valmiki. In some others, who come very near to them in poetic genius, yet not quite on a par, the instrumental intelligence is strong and active, it helps in its own way but in helping circumscribes and limits the original impulsion. The art here becomes consciously artistic, but loses something of the initial freshness and spontaneity: it gains in correctness, polish and elegance and has now a style in lieu of Nature's own naturalness. I am thinking of Virgil and Milton and Kalidasa. Dante's place is perhaps somewhere in between. Lower in the rung where the mental medium occupies a still more preponderant place we have intellectual poetry, poetry of the later classical age whose representatives are Pope and Dryden. We can go farther down and land in the domain of versificationalthough here, too, there can be a good amount of beauty in shape of ingenuity, cleverness and conceit: Voltaire and Delille are of this order in French poetry.
The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture that was their special gift. Leaving out of account Homer who was, as I said, a primitive, their classical age began with Aeschylus who was the first and the most spontaneous and intuitive of the Great Three. Sophocles, who comes next, is more balanced and self-controlled and pregnant with a reasoned thought-content clothed in polished phrasing. We feel here that the artist knew what he was about and was exercising a conscious control over his instruments and materials, unlike his predecessor who seemed to be completely carried away by the onrush of the poetic enthousiasmos. Sophocles, in spite of his artistic perfection or perhaps because of it, appears to be just a little, one remove, away from the purity of the central inspiration there is a veil, although a thin transparent veil, yet a veil between which intervenes. With the third of the Brotherhood, Euripides, we slide lower downwe arrive at a predominantly mental transcription of an experience or inner conception; but something of the major breath continues, an aura, a rhythm that maintains the inner contact and thus saves the poetry. In a subsequent age, in Theocritus, for example, poetry became truly very much 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought', so much of virtuosity and precocity entered into it; in other words, the poet then was an excessively self-conscious artist. That seems to be the general trend of all literature.
01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The world is full of ikons and archons; we cannot escape them, even if we try the world itself being a great ikon and as great an archon. Those who swear by principles, swear always by some personality or other, if not by a living creature then by a lifeless book, if not by Religion then by Science, if not by the East then by the West, if not by Buddha or Christ then by Bentham or Voltaire. Only they do it unwittingly they change one set of personalities for another and believe they have rejected them all. The veils of Maya are a thousand-fold tangle and you think you have entirely escaped her when you have only run away from one fold to fall into another. The wise do not attempt to reject and negate Maya, but consciously accept herfreedom lies in a knowing affirmation. So we too have accepted and affirmed an icon, but we have done it consciously and knowingly; we are not bound by our idol, we see the truth of it, and we serve and utilise it as best as we may.
***
03.03 - Modernism - An Oriental Interpretation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Mindmind in its rational modethus emancipated, exercised in its turn a domineering control over man's entire nature. All other members were made a subservient tri butary to that which was considered the members par excellence in the rational animal. The seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries form the period of its rule the former its bright period when it expressed itself in its truth and power, as embodied in what is called classicism in literature; the latter its darker phase, its decline, the manifestation of its weakness. Its death-knell was first sounded by Voltaire who symbolised the mind's destructive criticism of itself, the same which Anatole France in France and Shaw in England have continued in our days almost to a successful issue.
Rousseau brought in the positive element that determined the new poise of humanity. It was the advent of the heart, the coming in of the Romantic the man of sentiment and sensibility. 1 But life had not yet had its chance. Life, pure life the biological domainfirst declared its autonomy in art, for example, through the Realists and Naturalists. These pioneers, however, could bring forward mainly the facts, the constituents, the materials that compose life. The stuff was found, but the movement, life's own rhythm, was not there. It was new wine, but more or less in the old bottle. Zola or Maupassant or the Goncourts sought to express a life intrinsic and independent, but the instrument, the mould was still the old one; the manner and the movement, germane to mind and heart, continued to persist.
03.09 - Sectarianism or Loyalty, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Modern culture demands that one should not be bound to one creed or dogma, swear by one principle or rule of life or be led blindly by one man. Truth, it is said, has many facets and the human being is also not a Cyclops, a one-eyed creature. To fix oneself to one mode of seeing and believing and even behaving is to be narrow, restricted, sectarian. One must be able to see many standpoints, appreciate views of variance with one's own, appraise the relativity of all standards. Not to be able to do so leads to obscurantism and fanaticism. The Inquisitors were monomaniacs, obsessed by an ide fixe. On the other hand, the wisest counsel seems to have been given by Voltaire who advised the inquirers to learn from anywhere and everywhere, even Science from the Chinese. In our Indian legends we know that Uddhava did not hesitate to accept and learn from more than a dozen Gurus. That is as it should be if we would have a mind and consciousness large and vast and all-encompassing.
And yet there is a question. While attempting to be too liberal and catholic one may happen to turn a dilettante. Dilettante is one who takes an interest, an aesthetic, a dispassionate and detached interest in all things. His interest is intellectual, something abstract and necessarily superficial; it is not a vital interest, not a question of his soul, an urgent problem of his living.
03.11 - The Language Problem and India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The stamp of mental clarity and neat psychological or introspective analysis in the French language has been its asset and a characteristic capacity from the time of Descartesthrough Malebranche and Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists right down to Bergson. The English are not by nature metaphysicians, in spite of the Metaphysicals: but greatness has been thrust upon them. The strain of Celtic mysticism and contact with Indian spiritual lore have given the language a higher tension, a deeper and longer breath, a greater expressive capacity in that direction.
But French seems to have made ample amends for this deficiency (in the matter of variety of experiences especially in the supra-rational religions) by developing a quality which is peculiar to its turn of psychological curiosity and secular understandinga refined sensibility, a subtle sensitiveness, an alert and vibrant perception that puts it in contact with the inner (even though not so much the higher) almost the hidden and occult movements of life. That is how mysticismla mystiquecomes by a back door as it were into the French language.
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We may follow a little more closely the march of the centuries in their undulating movement. The creative intelligence of the Renaissance too belonged to a region of the higher mind, a kind of inspirational mind. It had not the altitude or even the depth of the Greek mind nor its subtler resonances: but it regained and re-established and carried to a new degree the spirit of inquiry and curiosity, an appreciation of human motives and preoccupations, a rational understanding of man and the mechanism of the world. The original intuitive fiat, the imaginative brilliance, the spirit of adventure (in the mental as well as the physical world) that inspired the epoch gradually dwindled: it gave place to an age of consolidation, organisation, stabilisation the classical age. The seventeenth century Europe marked another peak of Europe's civilisation. That is the Augustan Age to which we have referred. The following century marked a further decline of the Intuition and higher imagination and we come to the eighteenth century terre terre rationalism. Great figures still adorned that agestalwarts that either stuck to the prevailing norm and gave it a kind of stagnant nobility or already leaned towards the new light that was dawning once more. Pope and Johnson, Montesquieu and Voltaire are its high-lights. The nineteenth century brought in another crest wave with a special gift to mankind; apparently it was a reaction to the rigid classicism and dry rationalism of the preceding age, but it came burdened with a more positive mission. Its magic name was Romanticism. Man opened his heart, his higher feeling and nobler emotional surge, his subtler sensibility and a general sweep of his vital being to the truths and realities of his own nature and of the cosmic nature. Not the clear white and transparent almost glaring light of reason and logic, of the brain mind, but the rosy or rainbow tint of the emotive and aspiring personality that seeks in and through the cosmic panorama and dreams of
A light that was ne'er on sea or land. . .
1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Modern Science, obsessed with the greatness of its physical discoveries and the idea of the sole existence of Matter, has long attempted to base upon physical data even its study of Soul and Mind and of those workings of Nature in man and animal in which a knowledge of psychology is as important as any of the physical sciences. Its very psychology founded itself upon physiology and the scrutiny of the brain and nervous system. It is not surprising therefore that in history and sociology attention should have been concentrated on the external data, laws, institutions, rites, customs, economic factors and developments, while the deeper psychological elements so important in the activities of a mental, emotional, ideative being like man have been very much neglected. This kind of science would explain history and social development as much as possible by economic necessity or motive,by economy understood in its widest sense. There are even historians who deny or put aside as of a very subsidiary importance the working of the idea and the influence of the thinker in the development of human institutions. The French Revolution, it is thought, would have happened just as it did and when it did, by economic necessity, even if Rousseau and Voltaire had never written and the eighteenth-century philosophic movement in the world of thought had never worked out its bold and radical speculations.
Recently, however, the all-sufficiency of Matter to explain Mind and Soul has begun to be doubted and a movement of emancipation from the obsession of physical science has set in, although as yet it has not gone beyond a few awkward and rudimentary stumblings. Still there is the beginning of a perception that behind the economic motives and causes of social and historical development there are profound psychological, even perhaps soul factors; and in pre-war Germany, the metropolis of rationalism and materialism but the home also, for a century and a half, of new thought and original tendencies good and bad, beneficent and disastrous, a first psychological theory of history was conceived and presented by an original intelligence. The earliest attempts in a new field are seldom entirely successful, and the German historian, originator of this theory, seized on a luminous idea, but was not able to carry it very far or probe very deep. He was still haunted by a sense of the greater importance of the economic factor, and like most European science his theory related, classified and organised phenomena much more successfully than it explained them. Nevertheless, its basic idea formulated a suggestive and illuminating truth, and it is worth while following up some of the suggestions it opens out in the light especially of Eastern thought and experience.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
but desired. Voltaire tells a story, of the Good Brahmin an admirable, tragic figure which clarifies the
role of voluntarism (and pride) in the reach for heightened human awareness:
1.ac - The Hermit, #Crowley - Poems, #Aleister Crowley, #Occultism
He gave a fatal opening to Voltaire.
Our Hermi had dispensed with Sinai's thunder,
1f.lovecraft - A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Friendship for the celebrated Monsieur Voltaire was ever a Cause of
Annoyance to the Doctor; who was deeply orthodox, and who usd to say
1.pbs - The Triumph Of Life, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Said then my guide, "those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
"Frederic, & Kant, Catherine, & Leopold,
2.2.1.01 - The World's Greatest Poets, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yes, I plead guilty. But that, I hope, will be no reason why Vyasa and Sophocles should remain unclassified by you. And the others they intrigue me even more. Who are these others? Saintsbury as good as declares that poetry is Shelley and Shelley poetrySpenser alone, to his mind, can contest the right to that equation. (Shakespeare, of course, is admittedly hors concours.) Aldous Huxley abominates Spenser: the fellow has got nothing to say and says it with a consummately cloying melodiousness! Swinburne, as is well known, could never think of Victor Hugo without bursting into half a dozen alliterative superlatives, while Matthew Arnold it was, I believe, who pitied Hugo for imagining that poetry consisted in using divinit, infinit ternit, as lavishly as possible. And then there is Keats, whose Hyperion compelled even the sneering Byron to forget his usual condescending attitude to wards Johnny and confess that nothing grander had been seen since Aeschylus. Racine, too, cannot be left outcan he? Voltaire adored him, Voltaire who called Shakespeare a drunken barbarian. Finally, what of Wordsworth, whose Immortality Ode was hailed by Mark Pattison as the ne plus ultra of English poetry since the days of Lycidas? Kindly shed the light of infallible viveka on this chaos of jostling opinions.
I am not prepared to classify all the poets in the universeit was the front bench or benches you asked for. By others I meant poets like Lucretius, Euripides, Calderon, Corneille, Hugo. Euripides (Medea, Bacchae and other plays) is a greater poet than Racine whom you want to put in the first ranks. If you want only the very greatest, none of these can enteronly Vyasa and Sophocles. Vyasa could very well claim a place beside Valmiki, Sophocles beside Aeschylus. The rest, if you like, you can send into the third row with Goethe, but it is something of a promotion about which one can feel some qualms. Spenser too, if you like; it is difficult to draw a line.
--
The critical opinions you quote are, many of them, flagrantly prejudiced and personal. The only thing that results from Aldous Huxleys opinion, shared by many but with less courage, is that Spensers melodiousness cloyed upon Aldous Huxley and that perhaps points to a serious defect somewhere in Spensers art or in his genius but this does not cancel the poetic value of Spenser. Swinburne and Arnold are equally unbalanced on either side of their see-saw about Hugo. He might be described as a great but imperfect genius who just missed the very first rank because his word sometimes exceeded his weight, because his height was at the best considerable, even magnificent, but his depth insufficient and especially because he was often too oratorical to be quite sincere. The remarks of Voltaire and Mark Pattison go into the same basket.
2 April 1932
30.15 - The Language of Rabindranath, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Tagore's Goddess of speech is a pinnacled exquisiteness of beauty, harmony, balance and skill. Bankim's language also is beautiful and graceful - it is not rough and masculine; it is also charming but there is not in it such profusion, intensity and almost exclusiveness of grace, sweetness, beauty and tenderness as are found in Rabindranath. Prodigality, luxuriance and even complexity are hall-marks of Tagore's style. Bankim's is more simple and straight and transparent, less decorating and ambulating. There is in Bankim what is called decorum, restraint, stability and clarity, qualities of the classics; he reminds us of the French language - the French of Racine and Voltaire. In Rabindranath's nature and atmosphere we find the blossoming heart of the Romantics. That is why the manner of his expression is not so much simple arid straight as it is skillful and ornamental. There is less of transparency than the play of hues. Eloquence overweighs reticence. Echoes and pitches of many kinds of different thoughts, sentiments and emotions intermingle - his language moves on spreading all around, sparkling at every step. Subtlety of suggestion, irony and obliquity, a lilting grace of movement carry us over, almost without our knowing it, to the threshold of some other world. Rabindranath's style is neither formed nor regulated by the laws and patterns of reason, the arguments and counter-arguments of logic. It is an inherent discernment, the choice of a deep and aspiring idealism, the poignant power of an intuition welling out of a sensitive heart, that have given form and pace to his language. Reason or argument in itself finds no room here. That is only an indirect support of a direct feeling, a throb in vitality. This language has no love, no need for set rules, for a prescribed technique, so that it may attain to a tranquil and peaceful gait. It has need of emotion, impetus and sharpness. It is like the free stepping of a lightning flare, as if an Urvasie dancing in Tagore's own hall of music.
But it does not mean that this language is overflowing with mere emotion. Here too there is a regulated order and restraint. The ultimate growth and perfection of a language has something of the rhythm of an athlete's body in movement - in the steadied measure of the strides of a sprinter, for example. The transparency of intelligence as reflected in the classical manner, the firmness and fixity delivered by reason, the simplicity of syllogistic orderliness are not to be found here. But in our poet's creation, even in his prose the logic of intelligence may not be evident but there is a logic of feeling which is still, cogent and convincing, yet more living and dynamic.
BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
famous "Ezour-Veda" of the last century, considered by Voltaire "the most precious gift from the East
to the West," and by Max Muller "about the silliest book that can be read," is not altogether without
BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
copy of the drama of life around us. It is either, with Voltaire, the men of our own race under a
microscope, or, with de Bergerac, a graceful play of fancy and satire; but we always find that at
--
In a letter to Voltaire, Bailly finds it quite natural that the sympathies of the "grand old invalid of
Ferney" should be attracted to the "representatives of knowledge and wisdom, the Brahmans of India."
--
With regard to the Fourth, it was a bond fide deluge of water which swept it away. Neither Voltaire nor
Bailly, however, knew anything of the Secret Doctrine of the East.
--
That which with Voltaire was the shrewd conjecture of a great intellect, was with Bailly "a question of
historical facts." For "I make great case of ancient traditions preserved through a long series of
--
But as it is now the conviction of more than one Greek scholar -- as it was that of Bailly and Voltaire -that Hesiod's theogony was based upon historical facts (see Decharme's Mythol. de la Grece Antique),
it becomes easier for the occult teachings to find their way into the minds of thoughtful men, and
Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
blaspheme? Who is the Voltaire who dares laugh?
Pile one upon the other the sophisms of Diderot, the critical arguments
--
the laughter of the children of Voltaire before the imposing dignity of
their virtues. 10}
--
of songs, the France of Rabelais and of Voltaire, the France of Bossuet
and of Pascal, it is she who is the synthesis of all peoples: it is she
--
stigmatized by the pitiless genius of Voltaire!
Voltaire and Napoleon died Catholics.<<"I do not say that Voltaire died
a good Catholic, but he died a Catholic." --- E. L. Christian authors
--
acid of Voltaire, and realized, in the kingdom of the world, by the
genius of the Christian Napoleon.
--
that one must say what Voltaire so boldly said of God: "If it did not
exist, it would be necessary to invent it." But if a man had been
--
We will not speak of the criticism of Voltaire. That great mind was
dominated by an ardent love of truth and justice, but he lacked that
rectitude of heart which the intelligence of faith gives. Voltaire
could not admit faith, because he did not know how to love. The spirit
--
heroism of his courage. Voltaire would be the Messiah of good sense,
the Hercules destructor of fanaticism. ... But he laughed too much to
--
Voltaire parodied the Bible, dogma and worship; and then he mocked and
insulted that parody.
Only those who recognize religion in Voltaires parody can take offence
at it. The Voltaireans are like the frogs in the fable who leap upon
the log, and then make fun of royal majesty. They are at liberty to
--
There is depth in this thought. Voltaire, in effect, also was, in the
world, a being at the same time providential and fatal, endowed with
--
God sent Voltaire between the century of Bossuet and that of Napoleon
in order to destroy everything that separates those two geniuses and to
--
Do not let us here speak of Voltaire! Voltaire was not a wonder-worker,
he was the witty and eloquent interpreter of those on whom the miracle
--
And yet Julian in his time attempted more than Voltaire could
accomplish; he wished to oppose miracles to miracles, the austerity of
--
But Voltaire blasphemed no less against science, when he declare that
every hypothesis of faith was absurd, and admitted for the rule of
--
Moreover, the last word of Voltaire was this contradictory formula:
"GOD AND LIBERTY."
--
as the school of Voltaire understood it.
And Liberty, by which is meant an absolute independence of any master,
r1913 12 28, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The lipi in the samadhi is still fragmentary except in rare short sentences, sometimes even incoherent in the single word. eg In the bath of men voltithaire impressionably where voltithaire represents primarily Voltaires Theatre (dramas) and the expressions in the bath, of men Voltaires theatre impressionably, although separate, are run together as if forming one sentence. A less confused instance runs demain matin (one of the illustrators in Paris country. In jagrat samadhi antardrishta a series of clear and stable images have manifested, but they are all crude in nature and struggle out of the old long-standing obstruction and obscurity.
A movement has now taken place which marks the final liberation of the jiva from the fragments of dwandwa ragadwesha in the outward world-consciousness (priya-apriya, mangala-amangala) by the disappearance of the kartavya-akartavya, aptavya-anap-tavya. These things exist in the knowledge, but no longer in the emotional consciousness. The shadow of the old touches will fall for some time on the outer jada prakriti, but they will not be accepted by the organised consciousness of the jiva. Universal ananda is now hampered only by deficient physical mukti.
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
as Plato in his or Cicero or Tacitus in theirs or in French Literature Voltaire,
527
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
power of sudden iMumination as an epigram by Voltaire.
Similar borderline cases are brain-twisters, logical paradoxes,
--
the flight of Icarus, the Faustus legend, and so on through Voltaire's
Candide, down to the broken Promethean heroes of H. G. Wells
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
I went up to my fifth floor. I live in a rented room, a furnished one. It's a poor and small room, with a half-round garret window. I have an oilcloth sofa, and a table with books on it, two chairs, and an armchair, as old as can be, but a Voltaire one. I sat down, lighted a candle, and began to think. Next door, in another room, behind a partition, there was a bedlam. It had been going on for two days. A retired captain lived there, and he had guests - some six scurvy fellows, drinking vodka and playing blackjack with used cards. The previous night they'd had a fight, and I know that two of them had pulled each other's hair for a long time. The landlady wanted to lodge a complaint, but she's terribly afraid of the captain. The only other tenants in our furnished rooms are a small, thin lady, an army wife and out-of-towner, with three small children who had already fallen ill in our rooms. She and her children are afraid of the captain to the point of fainting, and spend whole nights trembling and crossing themselves, and the smallest child had some sort of fit from fear. This captain, I know for certain, sometimes stops passersby on Nevsky Prospect and begs money from them. They won't take him into any kind of service, yet, strangely (this is what I've been driving at), in the whole month that he had been living with us, the captain had never aroused any vexation in me. Of course, I avoided making his acquaintance from the very start, and he himself got bored with me from the first, yet no matter how they shouted behind their partition, and however many they were - it never made any difference to me. I sit the whole night and don't really hear them - so far do I forget about them. I don't sleep at night until dawn, and that for a year now. I sit all night at the table in the armchair and do nothing. I read books only during the day. I sit and don't even think, just so, some thoughts wander about and I let them go.
A whole candle burns down overnight. I quietly sat down at the table, took out the revolver, and placed it in front of me. As I placed it there, I remember asking myself: "Is it so?" and answering myself quite affirmatively: "It is." Meaning I would shoot myself. I knew that I would shoot myself that night for certain, but how long I would stay sitting at the table before then - that I did not know. And of course I would have shot myself if it hadn't been for that girl.
The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
degenerate man", says Voltaire himself, "is the foundation of the theology of all ancient
nations".
--
was shared by some men, as Plato and Virgil testify. Further, as Voltaire points out, "from
time immemorial, there was a maxim among the Indians and the Chinese that the Sage would
the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
7) There is only one Ethics, as there is only one geometry. But the majority of men, it will be said, are ignorant of geometry. Yes, but as soon as they begin to apply themselves a little to that science, all are in agreement. Cultivators, workmen, artisans have not gone through courses in ethics; they have not read Cicero or Aristotle, but the moment they begin to think on the subject they become, without knowing it, the disciples of Cicero. The Indian dyer, the Tartar shepherd and the English sailor know what is just and what is injust. Confucius did not invent a system of ethics as one invents a system of physics. He had discovered it in the heart of all mankind. ~ Voltaire
8) The sage's rule of moral conduct has its principle in the hearts of all men. ~ Tseu-tse
--
11) But in what circumstances does our reason teach us that there is vice or virtue? How does this continual mystery work? Tell me, inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago, Africans, Canadians and you, Plato, Cicero, Epictetus! You all feel equally that it is better to give away the superfluity of your bread, your rice or your manioc to the indigent than to kill him or tear out his eyes. It is evident to all on earth that an act of benevolence is better than an outrage, that gentleness is preferable to wrath. We have merely to use our Reason in order to discern the shades which distinguish right and wrong. Good and evil are often close neighbours and our passions confuse them. Who will enlighten us? We ourselves when we are calm. ~ Voltaire
12) In order to live a happy life, man should understand what life is and what he can or cannot do. The best and wisest men in all nations have taught it to us from all times. All the doctrines of the sages meet in their foundation and it is this general sum of their doctrines, revealing the aim of human life and the conduct to be pursued, that constitutes real religion. ~ Tolstoi
The Logomachy of Zos, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
regerminate afresh. As representative: Michaelangelo, Rabelais, Voltaire,
Balzac, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Swift, Darwin etc.
--- Overview of noun voltaire
The noun voltaire has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (8) Voltaire, Arouet, Francois-Marie Arouet ::: (French writer who was the embodiment of 18th century Enlightenment (1694-1778))
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun voltaire
1 sense of voltaire
Sense 1
Voltaire, Arouet, Francois-Marie Arouet
INSTANCE OF=> writer, author
=> communicator
=> person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul
=> organism, being
=> living thing, animate thing
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
=> causal agent, cause, causal agency
=> physical entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun voltaire
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun voltaire
1 sense of voltaire
Sense 1
Voltaire, Arouet, Francois-Marie Arouet
INSTANCE OF=> writer, author
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun voltaire
1 sense of voltaire
Sense 1
Voltaire, Arouet, Francois-Marie Arouet
-> writer, author
=> abstractor, abstracter
=> alliterator
=> authoress
=> biographer
=> coauthor, joint author
=> commentator, reviewer
=> compiler
=> contributor
=> cyberpunk
=> drafter
=> dramatist, playwright
=> essayist, litterateur
=> folk writer
=> framer
=> gagman, gagster, gagwriter
=> ghostwriter, ghost
=> Gothic romancer
=> hack, hack writer, literary hack
=> journalist
=> librettist
=> lyricist, lyrist
=> novelist
=> pamphleteer
=> paragrapher
=> poet
=> polemicist, polemist, polemic
=> rhymer, rhymester, versifier, poetizer, poetiser
=> scenarist
=> scriptwriter
=> space writer
=> speechwriter
=> tragedian
=> wordmonger
=> word-painter
=> wordsmith
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HAS INSTANCE=> Andersen, Hans Christian Andersen
HAS INSTANCE=> Anderson, Sherwood Anderson
HAS INSTANCE=> Aragon, Louis Aragon
HAS INSTANCE=> Asch, Sholem Asch, Shalom Asch, Sholom Asch
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HAS INSTANCE=> Tarbell, Ida Tarbell, Ida M. Tarbell, Ida Minerva Tarbell
HAS INSTANCE=> Thackeray, William Makepeace Thackeray
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HAS INSTANCE=> Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
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HAS INSTANCE=> Undset, Sigrid Undset
HAS INSTANCE=> Untermeyer, Louis Untermeyer
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HAS INSTANCE=> Vargas Llosa, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa
HAS INSTANCE=> Verne, Jules Verne
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HAS INSTANCE=> Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut
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HAS INSTANCE=> Walker, Alice Walker, Alice Malsenior Walker
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HAS INSTANCE=> Walpole, Horace Walpole, Horatio Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford
HAS INSTANCE=> Walton, Izaak Walton
HAS INSTANCE=> Ward, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Mary Augusta Arnold Ward
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HAS INSTANCE=> Wells, H. G. Wells, Herbert George Wells
HAS INSTANCE=> Welty, Eudora Welty
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HAS INSTANCE=> Wilson, Sir Angus Wilson, Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson
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HAS INSTANCE=> Wister, Owen Wister
HAS INSTANCE=> Wodehouse, P. G. Wodehouse, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
HAS INSTANCE=> Wolfe, Thomas Wolfe, Thomas Clayton Wolfe
HAS INSTANCE=> Wolfe, Tom Wolfe, Thomas Wolfe, Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr.
HAS INSTANCE=> Wollstonecraft, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
HAS INSTANCE=> Wood, Mrs. Henry Wood, Ellen Price Wood
HAS INSTANCE=> Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf
HAS INSTANCE=> Wouk, Herman Wouk
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--- Grep of noun voltaire
voltaire
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