Voltaire

Love truth, but pardon error.

Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

Go into the London Stock Exchange _ a more respectable place than many a court _ and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker. On leaving these peaceful and free assemblies some go to the Synagogue and others for a drink, this one goes to be baptized in a great bath in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that one has his son__ foreskin cut and has some Hebrew words he doesn__ understand mumbled over the child, others go to heir church and await the inspiration of God with their hats on, and everybody is happy.

Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.

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

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

If they're from the village, you take them to the inn. If they're from the city, you treat them with respect when they are beautiful and throw them on the highway when they are dead.

Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.

All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers.

Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.

So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.", May 16, 1767)

What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.