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We are obliged to place ourselves on the level of our age before we can rise above it.
Voltaire
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Voltaire
Age: 84 †
Born: 1694
Born: February 20
Died: 1778
Died: May 30
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François-Marie Arouet
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
Francois Marie Arouet
Dictator of Letters
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More quotes by Voltaire
In the matter of taxation, every privilege is an injustice.
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History is a pack of lies we play on the dead.
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The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.
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Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.
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Luxury has been railed at for two thousand years, in verse and in prose, and it has always been loved.
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How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite.
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It requires ages to destroy a popular opinion.
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He who doesn't have the spirit of his time, has all its misery.
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Chance is a word void of sense nothing can exist without a cause.
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There is no such thing as an accident. What we call by that name is the effect of some cause which we do not see.
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The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.
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The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.
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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.
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We admit, in geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five broad, and six in depth, in the largest heads.
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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.
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Men appear to prefer ruining one another's fortunes, and cutting each other's throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness.
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A small number of choice books are sufficient.
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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.
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