Voltaire Quotes: 44

• Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

• Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

• ‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

• Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

• It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

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

• The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.

• Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

• Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

  Questions sur les Miracles à M. Claparede, Professeur de Théologie à Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de M. de Voltaire

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

• Love truth, but pardon error.

• I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it."(Letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville, May 16, 1767)

• Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

• God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

• Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.

• God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

• Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

  Candide

• The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.

• The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

• Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

  The Works: Voltaire

• Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.

• We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

• It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.

• I loved him as we always love for the first time; with idolatry and wild passion.

• It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

• Perfect is the enemy of good.

• 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.

• He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

• To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid - one must also be polite.

• If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."(Notebooks)

• What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he's certain he'll go to heaven if he cuts your throat?

  Philosophical Dictionary

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

• L'homme est libre au moment qu'il veut l'être.

• The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.

• Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cars in order to win the game.

• If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.

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

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

• We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one

• It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.

• One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

  Philosophical Dictionary

• The perfect is the enemy of the good.

• The ear is the avenue to the heart.

• S'il n'existait pas Dieu il faudrait l'inventer."(If God did not exist he would have to be invented.)