Voltaire

Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.

If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?

I don't know where I am going, but I am on my way.

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.

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.

You're a bitter man,\' said Candide. That's because I've lived,\' said Martin.

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?

To caress the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten away our heart.

I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher.

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?

A physician is an unfortunate gentleman who is every day required to perform a miracle; namely to reconcile health with intemperance.

Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.

Optimism,\' said Cacambo, \'What is that?\' \'Alas!\' replied Candide, \'It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.

You write your name in the snow Yet say nothing.

I loved him as we always love for the first time; with idolatry and wild passion.

She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.

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.

The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.

Beware of the words \'internal security,\' for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor.

May God defend me from my friends: I can defend myself from my enemies.

What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on...

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?

Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.

No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for.

Let us cultivate our garden.

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

This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Minds differ still more than faces.

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.

The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.