Voltaire

If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.

I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.

There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.

In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are.

No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.

It is a severe Rebuke upon us, that God makes us so many Allowances, and we make so few to our Neighbor: As if Charity had nothing to do with Religion; Or Love with Faith, that ought to work by it.

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly.

In charity there is no excess.

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his work and in that work he does what he wants to do.

To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else – these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.