Voltaire Quotes - Page 4

All our ancient history, as one of our wits remarked, is no more than accepted fiction.
Voltaire
You are very harsh.''I have seen the world.
Voltaire
But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.
Voltaire
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
Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.
Voltaire
Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.
Voltaire
Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.
Voltaire
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
Voltaire
Go into the London Stock Exchange – a more respectable place than many a court – and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker. On leaving these peaceful and free assemblies some go to the Synagogue and others for a drink, this one goes to be baptized in a great bath in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that one has his son’s foreskin cut and has some Hebrew words he doesn’t understand mumbled over the child, others go to heir church and await the inspiration of God with their hats on, and everybody is happy.
Voltaire
Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.
Voltaire
Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.
Voltaire
Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
Voltaire
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
Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.
Voltaire
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
Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.
Voltaire
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
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
I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.
Voltaire
It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.
Voltaire
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
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
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid - one must also be polite.
Voltaire
Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.
Voltaire
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
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
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.")
Voltaire
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
He showed, in a few words, that it is not sufficient to throw together a few incidents that are to be met with in every romance, and that to dazzle the spectator the thought should be new, without being farfetched; frequently sublime, but always natural; the author should have a thorough knowledge of the human heart and make it speak properly; he should be a complete poet, without showing an affectation of it in any of the characters of his piece; he should be a perfect master of his language, speak it with all its pruity and with the utmost harmony, and yet so as not to make the sense a slave to the rhyme. Whoever, added he, neglects any one of these rules, though he may write two or three tragedies with tolerable success, will never be reckoned in the number of good authors.
Voltaire
The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
Voltaire
Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.
Voltaire
Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
Voltaire
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
Voltaire
The heart has its own reasons that reason can't understand.
Voltaire
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
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
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
Wisdom must yield to superstition's rules,Who arms with bigot zeal the hand of fools.
Voltaire
He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.
Voltaire
The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.
Voltaire
S'il n'existait pas Dieu il faudrait l'inventer." (If God did not exist he would have to be invented.)
Voltaire
Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men.
Voltaire
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
It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.
Voltaire
God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
Voltaire
God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.
Voltaire
on doit des égards aux vivants, on ne doit aux morts que la vérité.
Voltaire
There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
Voltaire
Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.
Voltaire
Love truth, but pardon error.
Voltaire
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Voltaire
The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.
Voltaire
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
Voltaire
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.", May 16, 1767)
Voltaire
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Voltaire
The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.
Voltaire
‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
Voltaire
If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.
Voltaire
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
Let us work without reasoning,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable.
Voltaire