Voltaire

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

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

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he’d said ‘What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?’ He wouldn’t even have started.

There are those that are void of all mercy, but when it comes the time that they are on their knees, they plead for it. Those that were born with the art of deception, never sincere with their words or actions. But mercy is not theirs to take, only for you to give. Never compromise your standards, your beliefs and become like the ones who you are fighting against, but stay resolute to who you are.

Life consists in what a person is thinking of all day.

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

By his father he is English, by his mother he is Americanto my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

If matters go badly now, they will not always be so.