Voltaire

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Love truth, but pardon error.

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.

It is the nature of babies to be in bliss.

Life gives nothing to man without labor.