Better is the Enemy of Good.
I only know in general that the people we are going to see are very atrabilious.
Having lived with kings, I have become a king in my own home.
Gli sciocchi ammirano ogni cosa in un autore stimato: io leggo per me e mi piace solo quel che mi serve.
A Frenchman who arrives in London, will find philosophy, like everything else, very much changed there. He had left the world a plenum, and he now finds it a vacuum.
The burning of a little straw may hide the stars, but the stars outlast the smoke.
But is there not a pleasure,” said Candide, “in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties?” “That is to say,” replied Martin, “that there is some pleasure in having no pleasure.
Upon such slender threads as these do the fates of mortals hang.
We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life.
I am so satiated with the great number of detestable books with which we are inundated that I am reduced to punting at faro.
True prayer lies not in asking for a violation of natural law but in the acceptance of natural law as the unchangeable will of God.
God should worshiped, not avenged. It is absurd for insects like ourselves to think we can avenge God.
They are the winds,” replied the hermit, “that swell the sails of the ship; it is true, they sometimes sink her, but without them she could not sail at all. The bile makes us sick and choleric but without the bile we could not live. Everything in this world is dangerous, and yet everything in it is necessary.” The.
They soothed him with words of flattery, and they gave him hope – the two traps into which people the world over will always fall.
Can you really believe that a drop of urine is an infinity of monads, and that each of these has ideas, however obscure, of the universe as a whole?
How is it that we have succeeded in persuading reasonable beings that the thing most impossible to understand was the most essential for them. It is because they were greatly frightened; it is because when men are kept in fear they cease to reason; it is because they have been expressly enjoined to distrust their reason. When the brain is troubled, we believe everything and examine nothing.
Consequently they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said all is for the best.
The moment of meeting, and that of parting are the two greatest epochs of life as sayeth the great book of Zend.
Plus je connais les hommes, plus j’aime les chiens!
For my part, I read only to please myself.