Voltaire

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

When a man is just and firm in his purpose, the citizens burning to approve a wrong or the frowning looks of a tyrant. Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind. Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic, nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove: Should the heavens crack and tumble down, as the ruins crushed him he would not fear.

Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.

If thou wouldst rule well, thou must rule for God; and to do that, thou must be ruled by him who has given to kings his grace to command themselves and their subjects, and to the people the grace to obey God and their kings.

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

The more you know, the less you need.

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.

A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle; …they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow; …those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. It comes at last-the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them-and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence, …a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

It is admirable to consider how many Millions of People come into, and go out of the World, Ignorant of themselves, and of the World they have lived in.