Quotes by Voltaire

An opportunity fordoing an injury happens a hundred times a day, hut for doing good not once a year, says Zoroaster.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

Perhaps, if I use my reason in good faith, I may suceed in discovering some ray of probability to lighten me in the dark night of nature. And if this faint dawn which I seek does not come to me, I shall be consoled to think that my ignorance is invincible; that knowledge which is forbidden me is assuredly useless to me; and that the great Being will not punish me for having sought a knowledge of him and failed to obtain it.

In cities where peace and the arts flourish, men are more consumed by jealousy, worry, and anxiety than they are in cities under the blight of a besieging army. Private sorrows are more bitter than public suffering.

Perhaps there is nothing greater on earth than the sacrifice of youth and beauty, often of high birth, made by the gentle sex in order to work in hospitals for the relief of human misery, the sight of which is so revolting to our delicacy. Peoples separated from the Roman religion have imitated but imperfectly so generous a charity.

If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.

It is not improbable that in hot countries, monkeys may have enslaved girls.

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.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God grante

It is proved...that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

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

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

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

In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.

But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything--in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure.

Le mieux est lennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.)

My dear young lady, when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the Inquisition, theres no knowing what you may do.

It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions.