A man loved by a beautiful woman will always get out of trouble

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother

Someone has said that the first soothsayer, the first prophet, was the first rascal who encountered a fool

I know of no great man except those who have rendered great services to the human race.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

I tried to believe in God, but I confess to you that God meant nothing in my life, and that in my secret heart I too felt a void where my childhood faith had been....

But how conceive a God supremely good/ Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,/ Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?[Written after an earthquake in Lisbon killed over 15,000 people]

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.)

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

Clever tyrants are never punished.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one.

There are men who can think no deeper than a fact

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best

A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live

“That is well said,” replied Candide, “but we must cultivate our garden

Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is

The fate of a nation is often dependent upon the good or bad digestion of a prime minister.

Weakness on both sides is, the motto of all quarrels.

You see many stars at night in the sky but find them not when the sun rises; can you say that there are no stars in the heaven of day? So, O man! because you...

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

on doit des égards aux vivants, on ne doit aux morts que la vérité.

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...

The best is the enemy of good.

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,...

We cannot wish for that we know not.

If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.

Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively

Your Majesty may think me an impatient sick man, and that the Turks are even sicker.

A good cook is a certain slow poisoner, if you are not temperate

The poor man is never free; he serves in every country

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Those who are absent, by its means become present: it (mail) is the consolation of life

I was never ruined but twice; once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one.

Business is the salt of life.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.

A witty saying proves nothing

Cela est bien, repondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.

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.

When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy

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

You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has always favored the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated reason

All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

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.

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

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

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

England has forty-two religions and only two sauces

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