And to every man has been assigned a good and an evil angel; one assisting him and the other annoying him, from his cradle to his coffin.
In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.
It is not improbable that in hot countries, monkeys may have enslaved girls.
Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
If God made us in his image we have certainly returned the compliment.
By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.
I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.
It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.
If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.
Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings and speech only to conceal their thoughts.
The first step my son which one makes in the world is the one on which depends the rest of our days.
Never having been able to succeed in the world, he took his revenge by speaking ill of it.
You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by...
The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.
But for what purpose was the earth formed? asked Candide. To drive us mad, replied Martin.