Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
But for what purpose was the earth formed? asked Candide. To drive us mad, replied Martin.
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
Replied
Martin
Formed
Mad
Drive
Asked
Purpose
Earth
Candide
More quotes by Voltaire
What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.
Voltaire
Many are destined to reason wrongly others, not to reason at all and others, to persecute those who do reason.
Voltaire
I acknowledge that four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is.
Voltaire
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.
Voltaire
Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all?
Voltaire
You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.
Voltaire
Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.
Voltaire
Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.
Voltaire
To make a vow for life is to make oneself a slave.
Voltaire
The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool.
Voltaire
I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.
Voltaire
The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.
Voltaire
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.
Voltaire
The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him
Voltaire
Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.
Voltaire
History is fables agreed upon.
Voltaire
What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.
Voltaire
Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.
Voltaire
If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply it is for your work alone to make answer.
Voltaire
Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.
Voltaire
