Voltaire

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.

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.

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left to him owes to his father’s care.

If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.

If thou art clean and warm, it is sufficient; for more doth but rob the Poor, and please the Wanton.

Do that which is assigned to you and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

One night awaits all, and death’s path must be trodden once and for all.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.