Voltaire

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

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

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

It is proved…that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

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

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they’re a mighty ornery lot. It’s the way they’re raised.

If you are in a poker game and after 20 minutes you don’t know who the patsy is, then you’re the patsy.

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness.

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

If you try to please everybody, somebody’s not going to like it.

A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.

Every man is an impossibility until he is born.

A true friend freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man’s self.

As you get older, you realize that no one has all the answers. It turns out that life is an exercise in living with the certainty of uncertainty. – Jason Kilar

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

We have a lot of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often.