#voltaire

It is man´s faith to live either on agonies of fear and turmoil or in the prostration of boredom. ↗

— Voltaire

#voltaire #faith

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh. ↗

— Voltaire

#voltaire #laugh

A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. ↗

— Mikhail Bakunin

#absolute #admire #condition #existed #god

And as Voltaire, one of our nation’s Founding Fathers, once said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but at your death I’ll defend what you rightfully should have said. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#founding-father #funny #opinion #voltaire #death

I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?' That is a hard question,' said Candide. ↗

— Voltaire

#voltaire #misery

During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying - half unconsciously, perhaps - to discover and to express the fundamental quality of his genius. ↗

— Lytton Strachey

#been #discover #during #earlier #express

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

#pleasure #voltaire #beauty

It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love. ↗

— Voltaire

#love #pangloss #voltaire #love

It was either Voltaire or Charlie Sheen who said, 'We are born alone. We live alone. We die alone. And anything in between that can give us the illusion that we're not, we cling to.' ↗

— Gabriel Byrne

#anything #between #born #charlie #charlie sheen

Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#civilization #derived #divine #grace #human