Voltaire

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

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

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

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

Logic is like the sword

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

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

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake . . . by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

Your dreams may have shattered, but that doesn’t mean they are over. They can still be turned into a mosaic of success.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

How you gonna win if you ain’t right within?

He will be loved when dead, who was envied when he was living.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.