Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one.
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
Law
Funny
Lost
Never
Lawsuit
Ruined
Twice
Lawyer
Humor
More quotes by Voltaire
Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them. -Francois
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
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.
Voltaire
History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.
Voltaire
I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.
Voltaire
What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.
Voltaire
Virtuous men alone possess friends.
Voltaire
Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.
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 superfluous, a very necessary thing.
Voltaire
Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.
Voltaire
I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species.
Voltaire
For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground?
Voltaire
If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.
Voltaire
Where some states possess an army, the Prussian Army possesses a state.
Voltaire
We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.
Voltaire
Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.
Voltaire
Descartes constructed as noble a road of science, from the point at which he found geometry to that to which he carried it, as Newton himself did after him. ... He carried this spirit of geometry and invention into optics, which under him became a completely new art.
Voltaire
Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.
Voltaire
Will is wish, and liberty is power.
Voltaire
