Voltaire

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

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

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

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

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

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

I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.

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

Use every distraction as an object of meditation and they cease to be distractions.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.

Why harass with eternal purposes a mind to weak to grasp them?

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.