“Our labour preserves us from three great evils — weariness, vice, and want.”

“Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.”

“I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species.”

“Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.”

“The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.”

“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”

“Dare to think for yourself.”

“‘Optimism,’ said Cacambo, ‘What is that?’ ‘Alas!’ replied Candide, ‘It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.'”

“We are rarely proud when we are alone.”

“To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid – one must also be polite.”

“It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.”

“Injustice in the end produces independence.”

“To hold a pen is to be at war.”

“When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.”

“Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.”

“I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.”

“Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.”

“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 as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.”

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

“I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.”

“Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.”

“Wherever my travels may lead, paradise is where I am.”

“One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.”

“What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he’s certain he’ll go to heaven if he cuts your throat?”

“If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace.”

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

“It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”

“It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.”

“The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.”

“Men argue. Nature acts.”

“In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.”

“Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.”

“The more a man knows, the less he talks.”

“Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?”

“Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.”

“All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.”

“All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.”

“All is for the best in the best of possible worlds.”

“We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization.”

“My soul is the mirror of the universe, and my body is its frame.”

“The interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists.”

“Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.”

“If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.”

“Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.”

“Minds differ still more than faces.”

“Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.”

“When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.”

“Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.”

“It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.”