I disapprove of what you say but i will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire abolished Christianity by believing in God.
In cities where peace and the arts flourish, men are more consumed by jealousy, worry, and anxiety than they are in cities under the blight of a besieging army. Private sorrows are more bitter than public suffering.
He is the man who knows everything and never dies.
I suspected as much.
An Opportunity of doing Mischief, says -Zoroaster-, offers itself a hundred Times a Day; but that of doing a Friend a good Office but once a Year.
I’ve wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but I still love life. That ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most pernicious inclinations. What could be more stupid than to persist in carrying a burden that we constantly want to cast off, to hold our existence in horror, yet cling to it nonetheless, to fondle the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten our heart?
Do transports of rage make a religion any truer? A man shot in a battle does not lose his temper, but argue with a theologian and he becomes implacable.
Good God!” cried he, “I have killed my old master, my friend, my brother-in-law; I am the best man in the world, and yet I have already killed three men; and of these three two were priests.
Let us work,” said Martin, “without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable.
What! have you no monks who teach, who dispute, who govern, who cabal, and who burn people that are not of their opinion?
I have been a hundred times on the point of killing myself, but still was fond of life. The ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts. What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us, and hug him close to our bosoms till he has gnawed into our hearts?
A great work must be novel without being far-fetched, frequently sublime, but always natural. The author must know the human heart, and how to make it speak; he must be a poet, without letting any of his characters speak like poets; and he must be a master of his language, using it purely and harmoniously and not letting the rhyme interfere with the sense.
Freedom is to depend only on the law and not on men’s whims.
I leave there, and I say to my husband: “If you are without sin, shave me, imprison me, take my property; but if you have committed more sins than I have, it is for me to shave you, to have you imprisoned, and to seize your fortune. In justice these things should be equal.
You are very hard of belief,” said Candide. “I have lived,” said Martin.
I scarce ever knew a city that did not wish the destruction of its neighbouring city, nor a family that did not desire to exterminate some other family. The poor in all parts of the world bear an inveterate hatred to the rich, even while they creep and cringe to them; and the rich treat the poor like sheep, whose wool and flesh they barter for money.
Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting for a better definition as a statement of facts as they are.
Religion, far from being beneficial food, turns to poison in infected brains.
The Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every Sunday that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call Adam. As for me, I do not understand anything of genealogies; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must allow that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are.