Voltaire

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

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.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

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

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

Knowledge is power.

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

To know fulfillment, nourish what is for the belly and not the eye.

The more you know the less you understand.

Where Example keeps pace with Authority, Power hardly fails to be obey’d.

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.

See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

Today, you can decide to walk in freedom. You can choose to walk differently. You can walk as a free person, enjoying every step.