Voltaire

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

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

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

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

The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe… the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the law rules, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

Riches are for spending.

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

That after an hour’s silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness… That’s all, it took him an hour to work that out.