I say again that nature is like nature. Why bother looking for comparisons?
Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and cannon made music such as Hell itself had never heard. The cannons first of all laid flat about six thousand men on each side; the muskets swept away from this best of worlds nine or ten thousand ruffians who infested its surface. The bayonet was also a sufficient reason for the death of several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls. Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.
Young women learn to feel more easily than men learn to think.
It is, it seems to me, to stop one’s eyes and understanding to maintain that there is no design in nature; and if there is design, there is an intelligent cause, there exists a God. People.
Contemplation of the stupidity which deems happiness possible almost made Voltaire happy.
After the earthquake had destroyed three-fourths of Lisbon, the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to prevent utter ruin than to give the people a beautiful auto-da-fe; for it had been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible secret to hinder the earth from quaking.
In short, Miss Cunegonde, I have had experience, I know the world; therefore I advise you to divert yourself, and prevail upon each passenger to tell his story; and if there be one of them all, that has not cursed his life many a time, that has not frequently looked upon himself as the unhappiest of mortals, I give you leave to throw me headforemost into the sea.
Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.
Every evil begets some good.
He who from his childhood has had a habit of trembling every time he heard certain words, needs these words, and needs to tremble. In this way he is more disposed to listen to the one who encourages his fears than to the one who would dispel his fears.
Our work keeps us free of three great evils: boredom, vice and poverty.” As.
Yes I have seen Paris; it is like all those kinds, it’s chaos, it’s a crowd in which everyone seeks pleasure and in which no one finds it, at least so it appeared to me.
The angel, as he was soaring towards the clouds cried out: ‘Make thy way towards Babylon’.
Fools admire everything in a noted author. I read only for myself, I like only what I have use for.
People so enjoy bring on the move, getting noticed back home, and boasting of what they have seen on their travels, that the two happy men resolved to be happy no longer...
Private misery is yet more cruel than public calamities.
I exist, you will say; but is this existence always a benefit?
God punished that scoundrel, but the devil drowned the others.
She was refused what people call the honours of sepulture – that is to say, of rotting with all the beggars of the neighbourhood in an ugly cemetery.
An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction is always to have something to do.