I’ve decided to be happy because it’s good for my health.
A hundred times I was upon the point of killing myself; but still I loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics; for is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which one can always throw down? to detest existence and yet to cling to one’s existence? in brief, to caress the serpent which devours us, till he has eaten our very heart?
To learn who rules over you simply look to those you cannot criticize.
Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
I am ignorant of how I was formed and how I was born. Through a quarter of my lifetime I was absolutely ignorant of the reasons for everything I saw and heard and felt, and was merely a parrot prompted by other parrots... When I sought to advance along that infinite course, I could neither find one single footpath or fully discover one single object, and from the upward leap I made to contemplate eternity I fell back into the abyss of my ignorance.
Opinion rules the world, but in the long run it is the philosophers who shape opinion.
A hundred times I have wanted to kill myself, but I was still in love with life. This absurd weakness is perhaps one of our deadliest attachments: can anything be more foolish than to keep carrying a fardel and yet keep wanting to throw it to the ground? To hold one’s existence in horror, and yet cling to it?
All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.
To have preferences, but not exclusions.
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 probably this feeling belongs only to individuals in transition. The grandchildren of these pessimists will frolic in the freedom of their lives, and have more happiness than poor Christians darkened with fear of Hell.
We adore each other, and yet are afraid to love; we are consumed with a passion which we both condemn. Zadig.
Il faut cultiver son jardin.
Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable.
It is given to us to calculate, to weigh, to measure, to observe, this is natural philosophy; almost all the rest is chimera.
Fools admire everything in an author of reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I like only that which serves my purpose.
I assert nothing, I content myself with believing that more is possible than people think.
I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, – astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc... It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry... But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins’ science not been long established in Europe.
I have been in several provinces. In some one-half of the people are fools, in others they are too cunning; in some they are weak and simple, in others they affect to be witty; in all, the principal occupation is love, the next is slander, and the third is talking nonsense.
I shall relate quite simply how things happened and without adding anything of my own, which is no small feat for an historian.
Pangloss most cruelly deceived me when he said that everything in the world is for the best.