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

Let us work without reasoning,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable.

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.

If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.

‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

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)

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

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

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Love truth, but pardon error.

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

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

on doit des égards aux vivants, on ne doit aux morts que la vérité.

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.

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.

S'il n'existait pas Dieu il faudrait l'inventer." (If God did not exist he would have to be invented.)

Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men.

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

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

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.

Wisdom must yield to superstition's rules,Who arms with bigot zeal the hand of fools.

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

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.

The heart has its own reasons that reason can't understand.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

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.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.")

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?

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

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.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid - one must also be polite.

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.

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.

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

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.

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.

Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.

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.

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

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.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.

Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.

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.

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.

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.

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

You are very harsh.''I have seen the world.

All our ancient history, as one of our wits remarked, is no more than accepted fiction.

By what incomprehensible mechanism are our organs held in subjection to sentiment and thought? How is it that a single melancholy idea shall disturb the whole course of the blood; and that the blood should in turn communicate irregularities to the human understanding? What is that unknown fluid which certainly exists and which, quicker and more active than light, flies in less than the twinkling of an eye into all the channels of life,—produces sensations, memory, joy or grief, reason or frenzy,—recalls with horror what we would choose to forget; and renders a thinking animal, either a subject of admiration, or an object of pity and compassion?

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

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.

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.

had no need of a guide to learn ignorance

Tears are the silent language of grief.

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.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Men employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

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.

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.

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.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.

Never having been able to succeed in the world, he took his revenge by speaking ill of it.

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]

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

Quand celui à qui l'on parle ne comprend pas et celui qui parle ne se comprend pas, c'est de la métaphysiqueWhen he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics.

I assert nothing, I content myself with believing that more is possible than people think.

One should always cite what one does not understand at all in the language one understands the least.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

Men argue. Nature acts.

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.

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".

Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.

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?

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.

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.

I have been studying for forty years, which is to say forty wasted years; I teach others yet am ignorant of everything; this state of affairs fills my soul with so much humiliation and disgust that my life is intolerable. I was born in Time, I live in Time, and do not know what Time is. I find myself at a point between two eternities, as our wise men say, yet I have no conception of eternity. I am composed of matter, I think, but have never been able to discover what produces thought. I do not know whether or not I think with my head the same way that I hold things with my hands. Not only is the origin of my thought unknown to me, but the origin of my movements is equally hidden: I do not know why I exist. Yet every day people ask me questions on all these issues. I must give answers, yet have nothing worth saying, so I talk a great deal, and am confused and ashamed of myself afterwards for having spoken.

Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

It is dangerous to be right, when the government is wrong

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?

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciproc

All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

I've decided to be happy because it's good for my health.

The best is the enemy of good.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

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

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

One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion

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

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

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.

An opportunity fordoing an injury happens a hundred times a day, hut for doing good not once a year," says Zoroaster.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

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.

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.

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.

If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.

It is not improbable that in hot countries, monkeys may have enslaved girls.

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.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God grante

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.

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend- provided of course he really is dead.

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.

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.

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.)

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.

It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions.

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")

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

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.

We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

Having lived with kings, I have become a king in my own home.

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.

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?

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

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.)

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.

People will continue to commit atrocities as long as they believe in absurdities.

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.

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 witty saying proves nothing.

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.

Writing is the painting of the voice.

The best is the enemy of the good.

Better is the enemy of the good.

Often the prudent far from making their destinies succumb to them.

I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.

Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

Weakness on both sides is as we know the motto of all quarrels.

Ask a toad what is beauty? ... a female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head a large flat mouth a yellow belly and a brown back.

The first step my son which one makes in the world is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

All the known world excepting only savage nations is governed by books.

The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything.

Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life.

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.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.

The world embarrasses me and I cannot dream That this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

Fear succeeds crime - it is its punishment.

Doubt is not a pleasant state but certainty is a ridiculous one.

My prayer to God is a very short one "Oh Lord make my enemies ridiculous!" God has granted it.

England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.

Froth at the top dregs at bottom but the middle excellent.

The superfluous is very necessary.

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Faith is believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

He who thinks himself wise O heavens! is a great fool.

Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.

If there were no God it would be necessary to invent him.

Pleasure is the object duty and the goal of all rational creatures.

God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.

If God made us in his image we have certainly returned the compliment.

The most beautiful of all emblems is that of God whom Timaeus of Locris describes under the image of "A circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Pleasure is the object duty and the goal of all rational creatures.

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

The fate of a nation has often depended on the good or bad digestion of a prime minister.

Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

History is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.

A good imitation is the most perfect originality.

We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

Luck is a word devoid of sense nothing can exist without a cause.

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.

When it is a question of money everybody is of the same religion.

Men argue nature acts.

Nature has always had more force than education.

We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day and of doing good once in a year.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

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 neighbours kindle it at home communicate it to others and it becomes the property of all.

Fear could never make a virtue.

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

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

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.

God prefers bad verses recited with a pure heart to the finest verses chanted by the wicked.

The infinitely little have pride infinitely great.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is.

The punishment of criminals should be of use when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.

Better is the enemy of the good.

Many are destined to reason wrongly others not to reason at all: and others to persecute those who do reason.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. It is not enough that a thing be possible for it to be believed.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Never having been able to succeed in the world he took his revenge by speaking ill of it.

I die adoring God loving my friends not hating my enemies and detesting superstition.

The secret of being tiresome is in telling everything.

Tears are the silent language of grief.

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

There are truths that are not for all men nor for all times.

You (Pindar) who possessed the talent of speaking much without saying anything.

Work banishes those three great evils boredom vice and poverty.

Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

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?