Voltaire

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

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

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

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

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

No two men can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

Work is always an antidote to depression.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Suffering is but another name for the teaching of experience, which is the parent of instruction and the schoolmaster of life.

Self-realization is effortless. What you are trying to find is what you already are.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.