Voltaire Quotes

“I am the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I have already killed three men, and of these three two were priests.”

“Cacambo asked one of the great officers in what way he should pay his obeisance to his Majesty; whether they should throw themselves upon their knees or on their stomachs; whether they should put their hands upon their heads or behind their backs; whether they should lick the dust off the floor; in a word, what was the ceremony? ‘The custom,” said the great officer, ‘is to embrace the King, and to kiss him on each cheek.’”

“They entered a very plain house, for the door was only of silver, and the ceilings were only of gold, but wrought in so elegant a taste as to vie with the richest. The antechamber, indeed, was only encrusted with rubies and emeralds, but the order in which everything was arranged made amends for this great simplicity.”

“’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.’”

“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.”

“I have not a farthing, my friend, and all over the globe there is no letting of blood or taking a glister, without paying, or somebody paying for you.”

“’It is more likely,’ said he, ‘mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another. Into this account I might throw not only bankrupts, but Justice which seizes on the effects of bankrupts to cheat the creditors.’”

“’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.’”

“All that is is for the best. If there is a volcano at Lisbon it cannot be elsewhere. It is impossible that things should be other than they are; for everything is right.”

“My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; there is nothing solid but virtue, and the happiness of seeing Cunegonde once more.”

“’It is demonstrable,’ said he, ‘that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the best end.’”

“Why should you think it so strange that in some countries there are monkeys which insinuate themselves into the good graces of the ladies; they are a fourth part human, as I am a fourth part Spaniard.”

“’There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.’ ‘All that is very well,’ answered Candide, ‘but let us cultivate our garden.’”

“’My friend,’ said the orator to him, ‘do you believe the Pope to be Anti-Christ?’ ‘I have not heard it,’ answered Candide; ‘but whether he be, or whether he be not, I want bread.’ ‘Thou dost not deserve to eat,’ said the other. ‘Begone, rogue; begone, wretch; do not come near me again.’ The orator’s wife, putting her head out of the window, and spying a man that doubted whether the Pope was Anti-Christ, poured over him a full.... Oh, heavens! to what excess does religious zeal carry the ladies.

“’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.”

“You reckon you are to-day going to feast upon a Jesuit. It is all very well, nothing is more unjust than thus to treat your enemies. Indeed, the law of nature teaches us to kill our neighbour, and such is the practice all over the world. If we do not accustom ourselves to eating them, it is because we have better fare.”

“A hundred times I was upon the point of killing myself; but still I loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics; for is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which one can always throw down? to detest existence and yet to cling to one’s existence? in brief, to caress the serpent which devours us, till he has eaten our very heart?”

“The villainy of mankind presented itself before his imagination in all its deformity, and his mind was filled with gloomy ideas.”

“’My friend,’ said he, ‘we are all priests. The King and all the heads of families sing solemn canticles of thanksgiving every morning, accompanied by five or six thousand musicians.’ ‘What! have you no monks who teach, who dispute, who govern, who cabal, and who burn people that are not of their opinion?’ ‘We must be mad, indeed, if that were the case,’ said the old man.”

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

“They give us a pair of linen drawers for our whole garment twice a year. When we work at the sugar-canes, and the mill snatches hold of a finger, they cut off the hand; and when we attempt to run away, they cut off the leg; both cases have happened to me. This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe.”

“Consequently they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said all is for the best.”

“There can be no effect without a cause,”

“It was necessary for me to have been banished from the presence of Miss Cunegonde, to have afterwards run the gauntlet, and now it is necessary I should beg my bread until I learn to earn it; all this cannot be otherwise.”

“Alas!” said the other, “it was love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sensible beings, love, tender love.”

“I know this love, that sovereign of hearts, that soul of our souls; yet it never cost me more than a kiss and twenty kicks on the backside. How could this beautiful cause produce in you an effect so abominable?”

“for private misfortunes make the general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are the greater is the general good.”

“My friend,” said he, “this is not right. You sin against the universal reason; you choose your time badly.”

“liberty is consistent with absolute necessity, for it was necessary we should be free; for, in short, the determinate will----”

“Pangloss most cruelly deceived me when he said that everything in the world is for the best.”

I praised God for bringing you back to me after so many trials, and I charged my old woman to take care of you, and to conduct you hither as soon as possible. She has executed her commission perfectly well; I have tasted the inexpressible pleasure of seeing you again, of hearing you, of speaking with you.

“Alas!” said Candide, “dear Pangloss has often demonstrated to me that the goods of this world are common to all men, and that each has an equal right to them.”

″‘I love you with all my heart,’ said Cunegonde, ‘but my soul is still full of fright at that which I have seen and experienced.‘”

“It is certainly the New World which is the best of all possible worlds.”

“but I have been so horribly unhappy there that my heart is almost closed to hope.”

“Alas!” said Cunegonde, “my good mother, unless you have been ravished by two Bulgarians, have received two deep wounds in your belly, have had two castles demolished, have had two mothers cut to pieces before your eyes, and two of your lovers whipped at an _auto-da-fé_, I do not conceive how you could be more unfortunate than I. Add that I was born a baroness of seventy-two quarterings--and have been a cook!”

“You do not know my birth; and were I to show you my backside, you would not talk in that manner, but would suspend your judgment.”

My throat was formed, and such a throat! white, firm, and shaped like that of the Venus of Medici; and what eyes! what eyelids! what black eyebrows! such flames darted from my dark pupils that they eclipsed the scintillation of the stars--as I was told by the poets in our part of the world.”

″‘You have seen earthquakes; but pray, miss, have you ever had the plague?’ ‘Never,’ answered Cunegonde. ‘If you had,” said the old woman, ‘you would acknowledge that it is far more terrible than an earthquake. ‘”

In short, Miss Cunegonde, I have had experience, I know the world; therefore I advise you to divert yourself, and prevail upon each passenger to tell his story; and if there be one of them all, that has not cursed his life many a time, that has not frequently looked upon himself as the unhappiest of mortals, I give you leave to throw me headforemost into the sea.”

“The beautiful Cunegonde having heard the old woman’s history, paid her all the civilities due to a person of her rank and merit.”

“What, is it you, reverend Father? You, the brother of the fair Cunegonde! You, that was slain by the Bulgarians! You, the Baron’s son! You, a Jesuit in Paraguay!”

“Reverend Father, all the quarterings in the world signify nothing; I rescued your sister from the arms of a Jew and of an Inquisitor; she has great obligations to me, she wishes to marry me; Master Pangloss always told me that all men are equal, and certainly I will marry her.”

“Master, you have done a fine thing now; you have slain the sweethearts of those two young ladies.”

“If I have committed a sin in killing an Inquisitor and a Jesuit, I have made ample amends by saving the lives of these girls.”

“But, gentlemen, surely you would not choose to eat your friends.”

“We have, I believe, the religion of all the world: we worship God night and morning.”

“Never was there a better entertainment, and never was more wit shown at a table than that which fell from his Majesty.”

″...mankind are so fond of roving, of making a figure in their own country, and of boasting of what they have seen in their travels, that the two happy ones resolved to be no longer so, but to ask his Majesty’s leave to quit the country.”

“My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; there is nothing solid but virtue, and the happiness of seeing Cunegonde once more.”

“but we have still two sheep remaining, with more treasure than the King of Spain will ever have; and I see a town which I take to be Surinam, belonging to the Dutch. We are at the end of all our troubles, and at the beginning of happiness.”

“Alas!” said Candide, “it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.”

“He put back, overwhelmed with sorrow, for indeed he had lost sufficient to make the fortune of twenty monarchs.”

“I have been in several provinces. In some one-half of the people are fools, in others they are too cunning; in some they are weak and simple, in others they affect to be witty; in all, the principal occupation is love, the next is slander, and the third is talking nonsense.”

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

“I do not see that that passion was strange. I have seen so many extraordinary things that I have ceased to be surprised.”

“Well, then,” said Martin, “if hawks have always had the same character why should you imagine that men may have changed theirs?”

“How, without wit, he appropriates the wit of others!”

“Sir, you think doubtless that all is for the best in the moral and physical world, and that nothing could be otherwise than it is?”

“It is here that I shall see again my beautiful Cunegonde. I trust Cacambo as myself. All is well, all will be well, all goes as well as possible.”

“Alas! how much better it would have been for me to have remained in the paradise of El Dorado than to come back to this cursed Europe! You are in the right, my dear Martin: all is misery and illusion.”

“My innocence would not have saved me if I had not been good- looking.”

″...it is noble to write as one thinks; this is the privilege of humanity.”

For the matter of that I say what I think, and I care very little whether others think as I do.”

“But is there not a pleasure,” said Candide, “in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties?”

“Well, well,” said Candide, “I find that I shall be the only happy man when I am blessed with the sight of my dear Cunegonde.”

“I am a man of honour, and it is my duty to love her still. But how came she to be reduced to so abject a state with the five or six millions that you took to her?”

″‘Thou mayest kill me again,’ said the Baron, ‘But thou shalt not marry my sister, at least whilst I am living.‘”

“that I should reason with you a little about causes and effects, about the best of possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and the pre-established harmony.”