Voltaire

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

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

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

My life is a struggle.

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

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

It’s like something shifted when I spoke to you, I can’t even put words to it. This sense of gentle peace, space, lightness, freedom. The realization that the longing I carried for so long, that pain was not about him all along. It was the yearning to return to that place from which, once upon a time, we all came.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

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

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.