Voltaire

What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide."That is because I know what life is," said Martin.

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

The best is the enemy of good.

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

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

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

The heart has its own reasons that reason can't understand.

All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciproc

Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all?

It is dangerous to be right, when the government is wrong

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

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

Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.

I have been studying for forty years, which is to say forty wasted years; I teach others yet am ignorant of everything; this state of affairs fills my soul with so much humiliation and disgust that my life is intolerable. I was born in Time, I live in Time, and do not know what Time is. I find myself at a point between two eternities, as our wise men say, yet I have no conception of eternity. I am composed of matter, I think, but have never been able to discover what produces thought. I do not know whether or not I think with my head the same way that I hold things with my hands. Not only is the origin of my thought unknown to me, but the origin of my movements is equally hidden: I do not know why I exist. Yet every day people ask me questions on all these issues. I must give answers, yet have nothing worth saying, so I talk a great deal, and am confused and ashamed of myself afterwards for having spoken.

The Jews are an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched.

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.

Shall I not render a service to men in speaking to them only of morality? This morality is so pure, so holy, so universal, so clear, so ancient, that it seems to come from God himself, like the light which we regard as the first of his works. Has he not given men self-love to secure their preservation; benevolence, beneficence, and virtue to control their self-love; the natural need to form a society; pleasure to enjoy, pain to warn us to enjoy in moderation, passions to spur us to great deeds, and wisdom to curb our passions?_