Quotes By Voltaire

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

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

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

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

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

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

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

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.

Tears are the silent language of grief.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.