The supper passed at first like most Parisian suppers, in silence, followed by a noise of words which could not be distinguished, then with pleasantries of which most were insipid, with false news, with bad reasoning, a little politics, and much evil speaking; they also discussed new books.
For,” said he, “all that is is for the best. If there is a volcano at Lisbon it cannot be elsewhere. It is impossible that things should be other than they are; for everything is right.
Apparently, then, sir, you do not believe in original sin; for if all is for the best there has then been neither Fall nor punishment.
God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another.
It is always the character of man which decides upon the character of his God; each one creates a God for himself, and in his own image.
Can men differently organized and modified by diverse circumstances, agree in regard to an imaginary being which exists but in their own brains?
Then they must prove that it is possible for a just God to punish men cruelly for having been in a state of madness, which prevented them from believing in the existence of a being whom their enlightened reason could not comprehend.
Very few people in the world would have a God if care had not been taken to give them one.
How can we face without fear, a God whom we suppose sufficiently barbarous to wish to damn us forever?
What then is human life? O virtue, how hast thou served me? Two women have basely deceived me; and now a third, who is innocent, and more beautiful than both the others, is going to be put to death! Whatever good I have done hath been to me a continual source of calamity and affliction; and I have only been raised to the height of grandeur, to be tumbled down the most horrid precipice of misfortune.” Filled.
That man claims our respect, who commands over the minds of the rest of the world by the force of truth, not those who enslave their fellow creatures; he who is acquainted with the universe, not they who deface it.
I have seen the worst,” Candide replied. “But a wise man, who since has had the misfortune to be hanged, taught me that all is marvellously well; these are but the shadows on a beautiful picture.” “Your hanged man mocked the world,” said Martin. “The shadows are horrible blots.
Are not theologians strange reasoners? As soon as they can not guess the natural causes of things, they invent causes, which they call supernatural;.
Is there no way of getting quickly out of this country where monkeys provoke tigers?
Learn that there are no basilisks in nature, that people are always healthy with sobriety and exercise, and that the art of making intemperance and health together is as chimerical as the philosopher’s stone, judicial astrology, and the theology of magi.
Io sono quello che definisco uno spirito errante per le passioni d’altri; ovvero un imbecille.
But do not you see,” answered Martin, “that he likewise dislikes everything he possesses? It was an observation of Plato, long since, that those are not the best stomachs that reject, without distinction, all sorts of food.
If any annals carry with them the stamp of certainty, they are those of China, which have united, as has been already said, the history of heaven with that of earth.
Our travelling missionaries candidly relate, that when they spoke to the wife emperor Camhi, of the chronology of the Vulgate, of the Septuagint, and the Samaritan, Camhi replied to them, is it possible that the books you believe in are at variance?
There are, however, some things good,” said Candide. “That may be,” said Martin; “but I know them not.