Quotes from Voltaire

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

We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.

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

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

God created sex. Priests created marriage.

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

I hate women because they always know where things are.

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.

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

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

In this best of all possible worlds… everything is for the best.

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly — that is the first law of nature.

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or never inventors.

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.

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

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

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

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.

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

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

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