Voltaire Quotes

“Antiquity is full of the praises of another antiquity still more remote.”

“Philosopher: A lover of wisdom, which is to say, Truth.”

“The biggest reward for a thing well done is to have done it.”

“I envy animals for two things - their ignorance of evil to come, and their ignorance of what is said about them.”

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

“A small number of choice books are sufficient.”

“Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.”

“Alas...I too have known love, that ruler of hearts, that soul of our soul: it's never brought me anything except one kiss and twenty kicks in the rump. How could such a beautiful cause produce such an abominable effect on you?”

“All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.”

“We are rarely proud when we are alone.”

“If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.”

“When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.”

“Tears are the silent language of grief.”

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

“Let us leave every man at liberty to seek into him and to lose himself in his ideas.”

“Persistence with patience and prayer pays with profits, prosperity and peace of mind.”

“We cannot wish for that we know not.”

“"I have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us the three great evils - boredom, vice, and want."”

“All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon”

“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 the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.”

“I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age.”

“When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?”

“Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.”

“Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting.”