Voltaire

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

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

Every great movement must experience three stages ridicule, discussion, adoption.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.

We falsely attribute to men a determined character, putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them, we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support, it is worse than a large family, he is the silent poor indeed.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.