Quotes from Voltaire

I know of no great men except those who have rendered great service to the human race.

Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need

Work is often the father of pleasure.

Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.

Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life.

Shun idleness is the rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.

Rest is a good thing, but boredom is its brother.

The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong

Illusion is the first of the pleasures

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

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.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.†

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

The great consolation in life is to say what one thinks.

All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws

Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.

Judge others by their questions rather than by their answers.

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delights of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed. I shall love you until I die.

Tears are the silent language of grief