Voltaire

“ THEOLOGIAN.
Faith, hope, and charity.
HONEST MAN.
Is there virtue in believing? If that which thou believest seems to thee to be true, there is no merit in believing it; if it seems to thee to be false, it is impossible for thee to believe it.
Hope should no more be a virtue than fear; we fear and we hope, according to what is promised or threatened us. As to charity, is it not that which the Greeks and Romans understood by humanity—love of your neighbor? This love is nothing, if it does not act; beneficence is therefore the only true virtue. ”

“ It is obvious that the style of history is not that of a funeral oration, and that the despatch of an ambassador ought not to be written like a sermon; that comedy is not to borrow the boldness of the ode, the pathetic expression of the tragedy, nor the metaphors and similes of the epic.
Every species has its different shades, which may, however, be reduced to two, the simple and the elevated. These two kinds, which embrace so many others, possess essential beauties in common, which beauties are accuracy of idea, adaptation, elegance, propriety of expression, and purity of language. ”

“ Tell me what you understand by being king? how are you born to be king, and to bear witness unto the truth? It is said that you can only arrive at the ear of kings with difficulty; I, who am a judge, have always had extreme trouble in reaching it. Inform me, while your enemies cry outside against you; and you will render me the greatest service ever rendered to a judge. I would rather learn to know the truth, than condescend to the tumultuous demand of the Jews, who wish me to hang you. ”

“ Strokes like these please every one, and characterize the delicate spirit of an ingenious nation. The great point is to know how far this spirit is admissible. It is clear that, in great works, it should be employed with moderation, for this very reason, that it is an ornament. The great art consists in propriety.
A subtle, ingenious thought, a just and flowery comparison, is a defect when only reason or passion should speak, or when great interests are to be discussed. This is not false wit, but misplaced; and every beauty, when out of its place, is a beauty no longer. ”

“ Those who persecute a philosopher, under the pretext that his opinions may be dangerous to the public, are as absurd as those who are afraid that the study of algebra will raise the price of bread in the market; one must pity a thinking being who errs; the persecutor is frantic and horrible. We are all brethren; if one of my brothers, full of respect and filial love, inspired by the most fraternal charity, does not salute our common Father with the same ceremonies as I do, ought I to cut his throat and tear out his heart? ”

“ The prince and his council see his right at once. This province, which is some hundred leagues distant from him, in vain protests that it knows him not; that it has no desire to be governed by him; that to give laws to its people, he must at least have their consent; these discourses only reach as far as the ears of the prince, whose right is incontestable. He immediately assembles a great number of men who have nothing to lose, dresses them in coarse blue cloth, borders their hats with broad white binding, makes them turn to the right and left, and marches to glory. ”

“ There is, therefore infinitely less wickedness on the earth than we are told and believe there is. There is still too much, no doubt; we see misfortunes and horrible crimes; but the pleasure of complaining of and exaggerating them is so great, that at the least scratch we say that the earth flows with blood. Have you been deceived?—all men are perjured. A melancholy mind which has suffered injustice, sees the earth covered with damned people: as a young rake, supping with his lady, on coming from the opera, imagines that there are no unfortunates. ”

“ To promise to God by an oath, that from the age of fifteen until death we will be a Jesuit, Jacobin, or Capuchin, is to affirm that we will always think like a Capuchin, a Jacobin, or a Jesuit. It is very pleasant to promise, for a whole life, that which no man can certainly insure from night to morning!
How can governments have been such enemies to themselves, and so absurd, as to authorize citizens to alienate their liberty at an age when they are not allowed to dispose of the least portion of their fortunes? ”

“ Petty compilers are always to be found who dare to become the enemies of their age. They string together passages from Plutarch and Athenæus, to prove that we have no obligations to Newton, to Halley, and to Bradley. They trumpet forth the glory of the ancients, whom they pretend have said everything; and they are so imbecile as to think that they divide the glory by publishing it. They twist an expression of Hippocrates, in order to persuade us that the Greeks were acquainted with the circulation of the blood better than Harvey. ”

“ Is it to be endured, that in a work of mathematics it should be said: "If Saturn should one day be missing, his place would be taken by one of the remotest of his satellites; for great lords always keep their successors at a distance?" Is it endurable to talk of Hercules being acquainted with physics, and that it is impossible to resist a philosopher of such force? Such are the excesses into which we are led by the thirst for shining and surprising by novelty. This petty vanity has produced verbal witticisms in all languages, which is the worst species of false wit. ”

“ The title of theologian is so great that the fathers of the Council of Trent give it to their cooks, "cuoco celeste, gran theologo." Their science is the first of sciences, their condition the first of conditions, and themselves the first of men; such the empire of true doctrine; so much does reason govern mankind!
When a theologian has become—thanks to his arguments—either prince of the holy Roman Empire, archbishop of Toledo, or one of the seventy princes clothed in red, successors of the humble apostles, then the successors of Galen and Hippocrates are at his service. ”

“ What becomes of, and what signifies to me, humanity, beneficence, modesty, temperance, mildness, wisdom, and piety, while half a pound of lead, sent from the distance of a hundred steps, pierces my body, and I die at twenty years of age, in inexpressible torments, in the midst of five or six thousand dying men, while my eyes which open for the last time, see the town in which I was born destroyed by fire and sword, and the last sounds which reach my ears are the cries of women and children expiring under the ruins, all for the pretended interests of a man whom I know not? ”

“ He is no longer the same man; he was barbarous, he was agitated with furious passions, when he saw an innocent woman killed, when he stained himself with the blood of his friend; he became a man again at the representation of it. His soul was filled with a stormy tumult; it is now tranquil and void, and nature re-entering it, he sheds virtuous tears. Such is the true merit, the great good of theatrical representation, which can never be effected by the cold declamation of an orator paid to tire an audience for an hour. ”

“ Thou either remainest idle, or thou repairest to another woman. Behold thyself between two mortal sins, which will infallibly cause thee to fall headlong from the narrow bridge into the pit of hell.
"I will suppose, that in our wars against the dogs of Christians we lose a hundred thousand soldiers; behold a hundred thousand girls to provide for. Is it not for the wealthy to take care of them? Evil betide every Mussulman so cold-hearted as not to give shelter to four pretty girls, in the character of legitimate wives, or to treat them according to their merits! ”

“ All the united vices of all ages and places will never equal the evils produced by a single campaign.
Miserable physicians of souls! you exclaim, for five quarters of an hour, on some pricks of a pin, and say nothing on the malady which tears us into a thousand pieces! Philosophers! moralists! burn all your books. While the caprice of a few men makes that part of mankind consecrated to heroism, to murder loyally millions of our brethren, can there be anything more horrible throughout nature? ”

“ But is it decent to insinuate in the pulpit a wish for the death of the emperor, the king of Spain, and the electors, and put in the balance against them the commander-in-chief employed by a king who was their enemy? Should the intentions of a leader—which can only be to serve his prince—be compared with the political interests of the crowned heads against whom he served? What would be said of a German who should have wished for the death of the king of France, on the occasion of the death of General Merci, "whose intentions were pure"? ”

“ Even a statue may be cold; we ought to perceive fear and horror in the features of an Andromeda, the effect of a writhing of the muscles; and anger mingled with courageous boldness in the attitude and on the brow of Hercules, who suspends and strangles Antæus.
In poetry and eloquence the great movements of the soul become cold, when they are expressed in common terms, and are unaided by imagination. It is this latter which makes love so animated in Racine, and so languid in his imitator, Campistron. ”

“ Providence sometimes puts us to the torture by employing the stone, gravel, gout, scrofula, leprosy, smallpox; by tearing the entrails, by convulsions of the nerves,-and other executors of the vengeance of Providence.
Now, as the first despots were, in the eyes of their courtiers, images of the Divinity, they imitated it as much as they could. What is very singular is, that the question, or torture, is never spoken of in the Jewish books. It is a great pity that so mild, honest, and compassionate a nation knew not this method of discovering the truth. ”

“ Why do we abandon to contempt, debasement, oppression, and rapine, the great mass of those laborious and harmless men who cultivate the earth every day of the year, that we may eat of all its fruits? And why, on the contrary, do we pay respect, attention, and court, to the useless and often very wicked man who lives only by their labor, and is rich only by their misery? ”

“ We have blind, one-eyed, cross-eyed, and squinting people—visions long, short, clear, confused, weak, or indefatigable. All this is a faithful image of our understanding; but we know scarcely any false vision: there are not many men who always take a cock for a horse, or a coffeepot for a church. How is it that we often meet with minds, otherwise judicious, which are absolutely wrong in some things of importance? How is it that the Siamese, who will take care never to be overreached when he has to receive three rupees, firmly believes in the metamorphoses of Sammonocodom? ”

“ The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice; who takes the property of his subjects, and afterwards enlists them to go and take that of his neighbors. We have none of these tyrants in Europe. We distinguish the tyranny of one and that of many. The tyranny of several is that of a body which would invade the rights of other bodies, and which would exercise despotism by favor of laws which it corrupts. ”

“ Some very subtle Greeks formerly consulted Pope Honorius I., to know whether Jesus, when He was in the world, had one will or two, when He would sleep or watch, eat or repair to the water-closet, walk or sit.
"What signifies it to you?" answered the very wise bishop of Rome, Honorius. "He has certainly at present the will for you to be well-disposed people—that should satisfy you; He has no will for you to be babbling sophists, to fight continually for the bishop's mitre and the ass's shadow. ”

“ What is toleration? It is the appurtenance of humanity. We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies—it is the first law of nature.
When, on the exchange of Amsterdam, of London, of Surat, or of Bassora, the Gueber, the Banian, the Jew, the Mahometan, the Chinese Deist, the Brahmin, the Christian of the Greek Church, the Roman Catholic Christian, the Protestant Christian, and the Quaker Christian, traffic together, they do not lift the poniard against each other, in order to gain souls for their religion. ”

“ But the rest of mankind, which are either heretic, or what thou callest infidel, will be an assemblage of monsters, and every time that thou speakest to a Lutheran or a Turk, thou mayest be sure that they will rob and murder thee, for they are children of the devil, they are born wicked; the one is not regenerated, the other is degenerated. It would be much more reasonable, much more noble, to say to men: "You are all born good; see how dreadful it is to corrupt the purity of your being. All mankind should be dealt with as are all men individually." ”

“ If a tyrant does me an injustice, I can disarm him through his mistress, his confessor, or his page; but a company of tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions. When they are not unjust, they are harsh, and they never dispense favors. If I have but one despot, I am at liberty to set myself against a wall when I see him pass, to prostrate myself, or to strike my forehead against the ground, according to the custom of the country; but if there is a company of a hundred tyrants, I am liable to repeat this ceremony a hundred times a day, which is very tiresome to those who have not supple joints. ”