Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.
Voltaire
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Voltaire
Age: 84 †
Born: 1694
Born: February 20
Died: 1778
Died: May 30
Author
Autobiographer
Correspondent
Diarist
Encyclopédistes
Essayist
Historian
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Political Scientist
Paris
France
François-Marie Arouet
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
Francois Marie Arouet
Dictator of Letters
Firsts
First
Eclipsed
Shines
Rank
Shining
Second
More quotes by Voltaire
Come! you presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure.
Voltaire
Villains are undone by what is worst in them, heroes by what is best.
Voltaire
The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.
Voltaire
Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them.
Voltaire
When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food, and the joy of living. Tecumseh Appreciation is a wonderful thing it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
Voltaire
It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?
Voltaire
If mankind were born tomorrow it would divide into groups each would scramble to invent their one and only god, and set about butchering each-other.
Voltaire
There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics.
Voltaire
It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.
Voltaire
Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.
Voltaire
How I like the boldness of the English, how I like the people who say what they think!
Voltaire
True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others.
Voltaire
The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.
Voltaire
But for what purpose was the earth formed? asked Candide. To drive us mad, replied Martin.
Voltaire
There is a pleasure in not being pleased.
Voltaire
Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.
Voltaire
All men are by nature free you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers.
Voltaire
A lady of honor may be raped once, but it strengthens her virtue.
Voltaire
It was decided by the university of Coimbre that the sight of several persons being slowly burned in great ceremony is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes.
Voltaire
I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.
Voltaire
