brig > brig's Quotes

“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything--in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.'
'You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher. ”
― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism

“Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Just for the sake of amusement, ask each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who hasn’t often cursed his life, who hasn’t told himself he’s the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first.”
― Candide, Candide

“How many plays have been written in France?' Candide asked the abbe.

'Five or six thousand.'

'That's a lot,' said Candide. 'How many of them are good?'

'Fifteen or sixteen,' replied the abbe.

'That's a lot,' said Martin.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“He showed, in a few words, that it is not sufficient to throw together a few incidents that are to be met with in every romance, and that to dazzle the spectator the thought should be new, without being farfetched; frequently sublime, but always natural; the author should have a thorough knowledge of the human heart and make it speak properly; he should be a complete poet, without showing an affectation of it in any of the characters of his piece; he should be a perfect master of his language, speak it with all its pruity and with the utmost harmony, and yet so as not to make the sense a slave to the rhyme. Whoever, added he, neglects any one of these rules, though he may write two or three tragedies with tolerable success, will never be reckoned in the number of good authors.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight.”
― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism

“God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“It is noble to write as one thinks; this is the privilege of humanity.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“A hundred times I have wanted to kill myself, but I was still in love with life. This absurd weakness is perhaps one of our deadliest attachments: can anything be more foolish than to keep carrying a fardel and yet keep wanting to throw it to the ground? To hold one's existence in horror, and yet cling to it?”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Why should you think it so strange that in some countries there are monkeys which insinuates themselves into the good graces of the ladies; they are a fourth part human, as I am a fourth part Spaniard.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“His face was the true index of his mind.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“to find why this sheep's wool was red; and the prize was awarded to a learned man of the North, who demonstrated by A plus B minus C divided by Z, that the sheep must be red, and die of the rot.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?" "Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?" "Yes, without doubt," said Candide. "Well, then," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same character why should you imagine that men may have changed theirs?”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
― Voltaire

“‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
― Voltaire

“Common sense is not so common.”
― Voltaire, A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism

“Love truth, but pardon error.”
― Voltaire

“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
― Voltaire

“Dare to think for yourself.”
― 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

“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
― Voltaire

“Man is free at the instant he wants to be.”
― Voltaire

“He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.”
― Voltaire

“It was a movie about American bombers in World War II and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers , and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans though and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five