Voltaire Quotes

I've decided to be happy because it's good for my health.

~ Voltaire

The best is the enemy of good.

~ Voltaire

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

~ Voltaire

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

~ Voltaire

One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion

~ Voltaire

What's optimism? said Cacambo. Alas, said Candide, it is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell.

~ Voltaire

Perhaps, if I use my reason in good faith, I may suceed in discovering some ray of probability to lighten me in the dark night of nature. And if this faint dawn which I seek does not come to me, I shall be consoled to think that my ignorance is invincible; that knowledge which is forbidden me is assuredly useless to me; and that the great Being will not punish me for having sought a knowledge of him and failed to obtain it.

~ Voltaire

In cities where peace and the arts flourish, men are more consumed by jealousy, worry, and anxiety than they are in cities under the blight of a besieging army. Private sorrows are more bitter than public suffering.

~ Voltaire

Perhaps there is nothing greater on earth than the sacrifice of youth and beauty, often of high birth, made by the gentle sex in order to work in hospitals for the relief of human misery, the sight of which is so revolting to our delicacy. Peoples separated from the Roman religion have imitated but imperfectly so generous a charity.

~ Voltaire

If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.

~ Voltaire

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

~ Voltaire

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God grante

~ Voltaire

It is proved...that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

~ Voltaire

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

~ Voltaire

In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.

~ Voltaire

But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything--in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.''You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure.

~ Voltaire

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.)

~ Voltaire

My dear young lady, when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the Inquisition, there's no knowing what you may do.

~ Voltaire

It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions.

~ Voltaire

At a great distance appeared with the same pomp the sheep of Thebes, the dog of Bubastis, the cat of Phoebe, the crocodile of Arsinoe, the goat of Mendes, and all the inferior gods of Egypt, who came to pay homage to the great ox, to the mighty Apis, as powerful as Isis, Osiris, and Horus, united together.In the midst of the demi-gods, forty priests carried an enormous basket, filled with sacred onions. These were, it is true, gods, but they resembled onions very much.(The White Bull)

~ Voltaire

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

~ Voltaire

Imagine all contradictions, all possible incompatibilities--you will find them in the government, in the law-courts, in the churches, in the public shows of this droll nation.

~ Voltaire

We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.

~ Voltaire

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

~ Voltaire

And ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I give you permission to throw me head-first into the sea.

~ Voltaire

What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us and hug him close to our bosoms tillhe has gnawed into our hearts?

~ Voltaire

We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence

~ Voltaire

Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.(Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)

~ Voltaire

Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any expirienced in a town when it is under siege.

~ Voltaire

People will continue to commit atrocities as long as they believe in absurdities.

~ Voltaire

Discord is the great ill of mankind, and tolerance is the only remedy for it.

~ Voltaire

What is tolerance? It is a necessary consequence of humanity. We are all fallible, let us then pardon each other's follies. This is the first principle of natural right.

~ Voltaire

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

~ Voltaire

A witty saying proves nothing.

~ Voltaire

And to every man has been assigned a good and an evil angel; one assisting him and the other annoying him, from his cradle to his coffin.

~ Voltaire

Writing is the painting of the voice.

~ Voltaire

The best is the enemy of the good.

~ Voltaire

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

~ Voltaire

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

~ Voltaire

The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything.

~ Voltaire