Voltaire

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child’s board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.

Every great movement must experience three stages ridicule, discussion, adoption.

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer –committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

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

To hold a pen is to be at war.

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

Life gives nothing to man without labor.

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Without passion, you don’t have energy. Without energy, you have nothing.