Voltaire Quotes

The harmony of a concert, to which you listen with delight, must have on certain classes of minute animals the effect of terrible thunder; perhaps it kills them.

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

If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.

Meslier was the most singular phenomenon ever seen among all the meteors fatal to the Christian religion.

Doubt is not a very agreeable status, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

I am the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I have already killed three, and of these three two were priests.

Everyone places his good where he can and has as much of it as he can, in his own way.

But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight.

An admiral should be put to death now and then to encourage the others.

No, nothing has the power to part me from you; our love is based upon virtue, and will last as long as our lives.

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.

To a toad what is beauty? A female with two lovely pop-eyes, a wide mouth, yellow belly, and green spotted back.

Those who are absent, by its means become present; it [mail] is the consolation of life.

Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them?

Antiquity is full of the praises of another antiquity still more remote.

Religion may be purified. This great work was begun two hundred years ago: but men can only bear light to come in upon them by degrees.

They are mad men (Jews), but you should not burn them for that.

If you want to kill Christianity you must abolish Sunday.

It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?

It must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms.

A circumstance which has always appeared wonderful to me, is that such sublime discoveries should have been made by the sole assistance of a quadrant and a little arithmetic.

I also know that we should cultivate our gardens.

God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest.

Nothing is more annoying than to be obscurely hanged.

All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them.

Since the whole affair had become one of religion, the vanquished were of course exterminated.

My life's dream has been a perpetual nightmare.

It has taken seas of blood to drown the idol of despotism, but the English do not think they bought their laws too dearly.

When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself.

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

A true god surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough... [or inspired] books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror.

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)

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

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

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

S'il n'existait pas Dieu il faudrait l'inventer." (If God did not exist he would have to be invented.)

Wisdom must yield to superstition's rules, Who arms with bigot zeal the hand of fools.

We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one

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

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.")

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid - one must also be polite.

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.

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

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.

Goth was sort of the melancholy cousin of punk that says: there's a lot of evil in this world, there's a lot of very mean spirited people and that makes me sad.

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

Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.

But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad, " replied Martin.

You are very harsh.''I have seen the world.