Voltaire

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 not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God’s pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence – neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish – it is an imponderably valuable gift.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

If we win, nobody will care. If we lose, there will be nobody to care.

He who praises every body, praises nobody.

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.