Quotes By Voltaire

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

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.

Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.

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

My life is a struggle.

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.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

Better is the enemy of good.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

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

To hold a pen is to be at war.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

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.