Voltaire

It is proved…that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

It is proved…that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.

The teacher reminded us that Romes liberties were not auctioned off in a day, but were bought slowly, gradually, furtively, little by little; first with a little corn and oil for the exceedingly poor and wretched, later with corn and oil for voters who were not quite so poor, later still with corn and oil for pretty much every man that had a vote to sellexactly our own history over again.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

When you cannot get a compliment in any other way pay yourself one.

You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.