Voltaire

Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

A witty saying proves nothing.

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.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

Society therefore is an ancient as the world.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

Nature has always had more force than education.

We cannot wish for that we know not.

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

History should be written as philosophy.