Voltaire

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

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

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as mortals.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

Zeal ever follows an appearance of truth, and the assured are too apt to be warm; but it is their weak side in argument; zeal being better shown against sin than persons, or their mistakes.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

The remedy is worse than the disease.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Eat therefore to live, and do not live to eat.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.