Voltaire

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

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

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

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

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to act despite our fears.

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to be quite true.

What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one’s self-approval.

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.

Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

We love and lose in China, we weep on England’s moors, and laugh and moan in Guinea, and thrive on Spanish shores. We seek success in Finland, are born and die in Maine. In minor ways we differ, in major we’re the same.

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.