"Heaven made virtue; man, the appearance."
Read quote
4 likes
Quote collection
Voltaire quotes (page 33 of 36)
701 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Feeble verses are those which sin not against rules, but against genius."
Read quote
4 likes
"A historian has many duties... the first is not to slander; the second is not to bore"
Read quote
4 likes
"Chess is a game which reflects most honor on human wit."
Read quote
4 likes
"You see, Mademoiselle, I have experience, I know the world. To pass the time, why don't you ask every passenger to tell you his life's story? And if there is a single one among them who has never cursed his life, who has not often told himself that he was the unhappiest of men, then you may throw me overboard, headfirst!"
Read quote
4 likes
"What can I hope when all is right?"
Read quote
4 likes
"Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will....The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated."
Read quote
4 likes
"This is no time to be making new enemies."
Read quote
4 likes
"I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths."
Read quote
4 likes
"Learn to cultivate your own garden."
Read quote
4 likes
"He was not the greatest of men but he was the greatest of kings."
Read quote
4 likes
"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."
Read quote
4 likes
"The way to become boring is to say everything."
Read quote
4 likes
"The only way to see the value of a play is to see it acted."
Read quote
4 likes
"I swear that, not being able to be yours, I will belong to no one."
Read quote
4 likes
"Men appear to prefer ruining one another's fortunes, and cutting each other's throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness."
Read quote
3 likes
"There is only one morality, as there is only one geometry."
Read quote
3 likes
"God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions."
Read quote
3 likes
"One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work."
Read quote
3 likes
"The question of good and evil remains in irremediable chaos for those who seek to fathom it in reality. It is mere mental sport to the disputants, who are captives that play with their chains."
Read quote
3 likes