Voltaire

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

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

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

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

Every great movement must experience three stages ridicule, discussion, adoption.

Love truth, but pardon error.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they know quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?

I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it. Some Folks think they may Scold, Rail, Hate, Rob and Kill too; so it be but for God’s sake. But nothing in us unlike him, can please him.

The power which resides in man is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

As Love ought to bring them together, so it is the best Way to keep them well together.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.

Avoid flatterers, for they are thieves in disguise.

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.

Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born -a hundred million years -and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.