Voltaire

Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

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

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

Character is just another word for having a perfectly disciplined and educated will.

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

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

Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.

Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life — some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed — because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.

The less government we have the better.

Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est (Knowledge Itself Is Power)

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

We have all seen with a sense of nausea the abject, squalid, shameless avowal made in the Oxford Union. We are told that we ought not to treat it seriously. The Times talked of the childrens hour. I disagree. It is a very disquieting and disgusting symptom. One can almost feel the curl of contempt upon the lips of the manhood of Germany, Italy, and France when they read the message sent out by Oxford University in the name of Young England. Let them be assured that it is not the last word. But before they blame, as blame they should, these callow ill-tutored youths, they must be sure that they have not been set a bad example by people much older and much higher up.

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.