Voltaire

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

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

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

Men’s men: gentle or simple, they’re much of a muchness.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

The sun is but a morning star.

Act, if you like, but you do it at your peril. Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.