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One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work.
Voltaire
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Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.
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"Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst!
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A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity
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The public is a ferocious beast: one must chain it up or flee from it.
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In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.
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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.
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Thought depends largely on the stomach. In spite of this, those with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.
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Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
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Error flies from mouth to mouth, from pen to pen, and to destroy it takes ages.
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To General Manstein:
The king [Frederic] has sent me some of his dirty linen to wash; I will wash yours another time.
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We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.
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This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
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We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth.
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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.
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Any one who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
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Christ was baptized by John, but He Himself never baptized any one; now we profess ourselves disciples of Christ, and not of John.
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If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent one.
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Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
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Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.
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The history of the world's great leaders is often the story of human folly.
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If one must serve, I hold it better to serve a well-bred lion, who is naturally stronger than I am, than two hundred rats of my own breed.
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It is strange that thought should depend upon the stomach, and still that men with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.
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The English plays are like their English puddings: nobody has any taste for them but themselves.
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"Well! sage Evhemere, what have you seen in all your travels?" "Follies!"
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Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
Voltaire
Creative Commons
Born:
November 21, 1694
Died:
May 30, 1778
(aged 83)
Bio:
François-Marie Arouet, famous using his pen name Voltaire, was a French writer, deist and philosopher.
Known for:
Candide (1759)
Zadig (1747)
L'Ingénu (1767)
Micromégas
Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)
Most used words:
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