Voltaire Quotes (373 Quotes)


    In this country it is considered wise to kill an admiral from time to time in order to encourage the others

    The ear is the avenue to the heart.

    If death did not exist today, it would be necessary to invent it

    He who doesn't have the spirit of his time, has all its misery.

    It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.


    Not to be occupied, and not to exist, amount to the same thing.

    The poor man is never free he serves in every country

    The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

    To announce truths is an infallible receipt for being persecuted.

    The secret of being boring is to say everything.

    The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.

    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 mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

    Repose is a good thing, but boredom is its brother

    Business is the salt of life.

    The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

    No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

    The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.

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

    This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

    God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.

    Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting.

    What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

    It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

    Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.

    It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

    The biggest reward for a thing well done is to have done it.

    One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work.

    There's scarce a point whereon mankind agree - So well as in their boast of killing me I boast of nothing, but when I've a mind - I think I can be even with mankind

    Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

    In this best of possible worlds ... all is for the best.

    Clever tyrants are never punished.

    Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

    Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

    The superfluous is very necessary.

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

    It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

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

    Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

    If this is the best of possible worlds ... what then are the others.

    It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

    We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.

    Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

    I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

    Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

    Once the people begin to reason, all is lost.

    Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

    It is said that God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions. On dit que Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons.

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

    Minds differ still more than faces.


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