#voltaire

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

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