Voltaire

Now, now, my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.

I die without regret. I have lived as a philosopher; I die as a Christian.

What a fuss about an egg!

The infinitely small is as unknown to us as the infinitely great.

Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of life and truth.

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

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.

History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play on the dead.

All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

The only way to comprehend what other people are saying is to comprehend what they mean in saying it.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon our follies—it is the first law of nature.

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.

The instruction we have received from nature is to love life and to fear death.

The most beautiful of all things is justice.

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.

The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.