Voltaire

“Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.”

“When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.”

“What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.”

“We are all full of weakness and errors let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.”

“How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.”

“One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.”

“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.”

“What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.”

“The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.”

“Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.”

“He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.”

“He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.”

“Society therefore is an ancient as the world.”

“I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.”

“Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors but they are seldom or ever inventors.”

“The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.”

“Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.”

“Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.”

“If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.”