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Voltaire



  • England has forty - two religions and only two sauces.



  • Men argue, nature acts.



  • Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.



  • We never live, but, we are always in the expectation of living.



  • Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is.



  • Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.



  • My prayer to God is a very short one ''oh Lord, Make my enemies ridiculous!'' God has granted it.



  • The fate of a nation has often depended on the good or bad digestion of a prime minister.



  • Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them.



  • God prefers bad verses recited with a pure heart to the finest verses chanted by the wicked.



  • Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.



  • I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.



  • The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream That this watch exists and has no watchmaker.



  • Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.



  • A good imitation is the most perfect originality.



  • He who thinks himself wise, O heavens! is a great fool.



  • I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I gained one.



  • The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.



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



  • The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.



  • We offer up prayers to God only because we have made Him after our own image. we treat Him like a Pasha, or a Sultan, Who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.



  • When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.



  • Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all: and others to persecute those who do reason.



  • Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.



  • The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything.



  • It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.



  • All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.



  • Fear could never make a virtue.



  • Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?



  • The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.



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



  • Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.



  • Faith is believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.



  • Luck is a word devoid of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.



  • When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.



  • Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.



  • Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.



  • There are truths that are not for all men, nor for all times.



  • The infinitely little have pride infinitely great.



  • Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.



  • The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.



  • The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.



  • The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.



  • If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.



  • If God made us in his image, we have certainly returned the compliment.



  • Fear follows crime, and is its punishment.



  • Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.



  • God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere.



  • History is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.



  • Tears are the silent language of grief.



  • Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.



  • The superfluous is very necessary.



  • If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.



  • I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.



  • The best is the enemy of the good.



  • Ask a toad what is beauty?...a female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head, a large flat mouth, a yellow belly and a brown back.



  • Nature has always had more force than education.



  • Never having been able to succeed in the world, he took his revenge by speaking ill of it.



  • The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.



  • What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.



  • You (Pindar) who possessed the talent of speaking much without saying anything.



  • Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life.



  • I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.



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