Martin Quotes

“’How many dramas have you in France, sir?’ said Candide to the Abbé. ‘Five or six thousand.’ ‘What a number!’ said Candide. ‘How many good?’ ‘Fifteen or sixteen,’ replied the other. ‘What a number!’ said Martin.”

“I own to you that when I cast an eye on this globe, or rather on this little ball, I cannot help thinking that God has abandoned it to some malignant being. I except, always, El Dorado. I scarcely ever knew a city that did not desire the destruction of a neighbouring city, nor a family that did not wish to exterminate some other family. Everywhere the weak execrate the powerful, before whom they cringe; and the powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell. A million regimented assassins, from one extremity of Europe to the other, get their bread by disciplined depredation and murder, for want of more honest employment. Even in those cities which seem to enjoy peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured by more envy, care, and uneasiness than are experienced by a besieged town. Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities. In a word I have seen so much, and experienced so much that I am a Manichean.”

“’But do you believe,’ said Candide, ‘that the earth was originally a sea, as we find it asserted in that large book belonging to the captain?’ ‘I do not believe a word of it,’ said Martin, ‘any more than I do of the many ravings which have been published lately.’”

“’You see,’ said Candide to Martin, ‘that crime is sometimes punished. This rogue of a Dutch skipper has met with the fate he deserved.’ ‘Yes,’ said Martin; ‘but why should the passengers be doomed also to destruction? God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest.’”

“‘But for what end, then, has this world been formed?’ said Candide. ‘To plague us to death,’ answered Martin.”

“Martin wiped the sweat off his face with his arm and slouched against the warm stones of the bridge. Sean perched next to him, legs dangling over the trickle of the parched stream. Boredom came back like a headache. It was too hot.”