Voltaire

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

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

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

Force may make hypocrites, but it can never make converts.

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos; trees, clouds, everything.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Earth laughs in flowers.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

I know no religion that destroys courtesy, civility, and kindness.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Sympathetic people often don’t communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.

A country-bred man can always learn to get on with city people, but a town-bred fellah never gets the real hang of the country. You can put city polish on a man, but by golly, it seems you can’t ever rub it off him.

We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.

It is admirable to consider how many Millions of People come into, and go out of the World, Ignorant of themselves, and of the World they have lived in.

You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.