Voltaire

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

Necessity does everything well.

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.

I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are evil.

What do sad complaints avail if the offense is not cut down by punishment.

The walking of Man is falling forwards.

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

If he really thinks there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.