I have but one prayer: ‘Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.
If religion was necessary to all men, it ought to be intelligible to all men.
I loved him as one loves for the first time – with idolatry, with transport.
When one is loved by a beautiful woman, says the great Zoroaster, one always gets out of trouble in this world.
In short, the alphabet was the origin of all man’s knowledge, and of all his errors.
He was unhappy only when he thought: and that is true of the majority of mankind.
We must work without arguing... that is the only way to make life bearable.
Do you trust,” said Candide, “that guys have always massacred every other as they do to-day, that they’ve always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, green with envy, formidable, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, enthusiasts, hypocrites, and fools?
History is a collection of agreed upon lies.
These two sentiments, “liberty and equality,” do not necessarily lead to calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, and devastation of the lands of neighbors; but, the towering ambition and thirst for power of the great precipitate them head-long into every species of crime in all periods and all places.
If He resolved in His decrees to allow this fall, there is no doubt that He desired it to take place: otherwise it would not have happened.
The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers are what novels are for women.
Would they not have the right to complain of a God who, having the power of leaving them in oblivion, brought them forth, although He foresaw very well that His justice would force Him sooner or later to punish them?
He spoke to them with great kindness, although in the depths of his heart he was a little angry that the infinitely small had an almost infinitely great pride.
If we do not meet with agreeable things, we shall at least meet with something new.
The beauty which strikes the senses merely, the imagination, and that which is called “intelligence,” is.
People will cease to commit atrocities only when they cease to believe absurdities.
Fairest lady,” said Candide, “when a man is in love, jealous, and whipped by the Inquisition, he no longer knows what he’s doing.
I exist, I think, I feel pain. Is all this as certain as a geometric truth? Yes. Why? It is because these truths are proved by the same principle that a thing cannot be and not be at the same thime. I cannot at the same time exist and not exist, feel and not feel. A triangle cannot at the same time have and not have 180 degrees, which is the sum of two right angles.
If you do not want to commit suicide, always have something to do.