Voltaire

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

It isn’t safe to sit in judgment upon another person’s illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

Mysteries are due to secrecy.

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

Self-denial is not a virtue, it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.