Voltaire

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

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

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.

If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.

Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

Have wholesome, but not costly Food, and be rather cleanly than dainty in ordering it.

When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from those who have never left home.

The third component of the Law of Dharma is service to humanity–to serve your fellow human beings and to ask yourself the questions,How can I help? How can I help all those that I come into contact with? When you combine the ability to express your unique talent with service to humanity, then you make full use of the Law of Dharma.

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.