Voltaire

Dare to think for yourself.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

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

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

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

You know you’re a success when you look at your kids and realize they turned out better than you.

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

I’m out there to clean the plate. Once they’ve read what I’ve written on a subject, I want them to think, ‘That’s it!’ I think the highest aspiration people in our trade can have is that once they’ve written a story, nobody will ever try it again.

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as “rank presumption”.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Logic is like the sword

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.