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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 books.
Voltaire
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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
Book
Whose
Savage
World
Drink
Governed
Books
Savages
Pleasure
Despise
Nations
Beer
Excepting
Known
Vanity
Vanities
Lives
Pursuit
Indolence
Remember
Ambition
Absorbed
More quotes by Voltaire
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.
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There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
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One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence.
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You see, Mademoiselle, I have experience, I know the world. To pass the time, why don't you ask every passenger to tell you his life's story? And if there is a single one among them who has never cursed his life, who has not often told himself that he was the unhappiest of men, then you may throw me overboard, headfirst!
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He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity.
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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.
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Know that the secret of the arts is to correct nature.
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It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?
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Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.
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Superstition sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them.
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A circumstance which has always appeared wonderful to me, is that such sublime discoveries should have been made by the sole assistance of a quadrant and a little arithmetic.
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Historians are gossips who tease the dead
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It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.
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The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
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Common sense is not so common.
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The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us
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Your destiny is that of a man, your vows those of a god.
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It is not enough to conquer one must learn to seduce.
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I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.
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We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good we do the best we know.
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