Voltaire

“ I ask you, my dear Parouba, is not your climate made for you? It cannot be injurious, since neither you nor your companions wish to leave it. Esquimaux, Icelanders, Laplanders, Asiatics, and Indians, never think of leaving theirs. The reindeer, which God has sent to clothe and feed them, die when transported to another zone. Laplanders themselves die in southern climates. The south of Siberia is too warm for them; here they would die of heat. It is evident that God made every kind of animal and vegetable for the clime in which it thrives. ”

“ I have shown you that the machine of the world is the work of an intelligent and powerful Being; you, who are intelligent, ought to admire Him— you, who are laden with His gifts, ought to adore Him.
But how, you inquire, can the wretches who are condemned to languish under incurable evils—how can they admire and love? I must tell you, that such ills are generally brought on ourselves, or come to us from our fathers, who abused their bodies, and not from the great fabricator. No disease but decrepitude was known in America till we introduced strong liquors, the source of all evils. ”

“ God does not permit, nor command, nor authorize crime. But he has made man; he has established laws of motion; and these eternal laws are equally executed by the good man who stretches out his hand to the poor, and by the hand of a villain who assassinates his brother. ”

“ Negroes, a race of men so different from ours, are so thoroughly formed for their country, that thousands of them have preferred death to slavery elsewhere. The camel and ostrich are quite at home in the sands of Africa. The bull abounds in fertile countries, where the grass is ever fresh for his nourishment. Cinnamon and spice only grow in India. Barley is only useful in those countries where God has appointed it to grow. From one end of America to the other, you have different kinds of food. ”

“ Can you require that God should let you live for ages, as the reward of your gluttony, your drunkenness, your incontinence, and your indulgence in infamous passions, which corrupt the blood and necessarily shorten life? ”

“ But to consider scourges, such as inundations, volcanoes, earthquakes. If you confine your attention to the accidents which sometimes happen to the wheels of the eternal machine, you may well consider God as a tyrant; but observe his ceaseless benefits, and He becomes a compassionate father. ”

“ What is the use of the vast deserts on the borders of Syria—deserts so horrible that the ferocious animals, called Jews, imagined they had reached Paradise when they passed from these scenes of horror into a little corner of land where they could cultivate a few acres? It is not enough that man (the noble creature) should be so ill lodged, clothed, and fed, for so many ages. ”

“ You cannot say a man is a poor artisan when an immense machine, formed by him, lasts unimpaired for years. If a man invented a hydraulic engine to water a province, would you disparage his work because it destroys some insects? ”

“ All the northern coast of the old world is exposed to the same cruel necessity; and from Swedish Laponia to the Sea of Japan, a hundred tribes spend a life as short as it is wretched, in the most complete want, amidst eternal snows. ”

“ Murder has been the practice from one end of the earth to the other; and men have been weak enough to give to those men who slew the greatest number of their fellow creatures, the titles of heroes, demi-gods, and even gods.
In America there were left two great nations, beginning to enjoy the sweets of peace and civilization, when the Spaniards came there to slay eleven millions. They hunted men down with dogs ”

“ He lets the sun shine on the evil and the good. If some wretches expire in their crimes, it is by the general laws that govern the world. I have read in a great book, by a Frenchman called Mézeray, that God caused our Henry V. to suffer a painful death, because he dared to sit on the throne of a Christian king.
The physical part of a bad action is the effect of the primary laws given to matter by the hand of God. All moral evil is the effect of the liberty which man abuses. ”

“ It is in vain to say that mountains of two thousand toises in elevation are nothing on a globe nine thousand miles in diameter, or like the irregularities of an orange compared with the bulk of that fruit that it is scarcely one foot to every three thousand feet. ”

“ The vine cannot be brought to perfection in England, nor in Sweden and Canada. This is the reason that in some countries the elements of religious rites consist in bread and wine; and they do well to thank God for the food and beverage His goodness has provided; and Americans would do well to thank Him for their Indian corn and arrow-root. Throughout the world God has suited all animals, from the snail to man, to the countries in which He has placed them. ”

“ So essential to the nature of the universe is fire, that but for it there would be no sun nor stars, no animals, vegetables, or minerals. The fire, placed under the earth, is subject to fixed natural laws. ”

“ Fine climates are continually exposed to destructive scourges. There we walk over burning precipices, covered by fertile plains, which prove but deadly snares. There is no hell but this, doubtless; and it opens a hundred times beneath our feet. ”

“ All enlightened Spaniards agree that a small number of their ancestors abused this liberty so far as to commit crimes that make human nature shudder. The second Don Carlos did what he could to repair the atrocities committed by the Spaniards under Ferdinand and Charles V.
If there is crime in the world, my friends, there is virtue as well. ”

“ Volcanoes have several times devastated lovely Italy. As a crowning misfortune, the inhabitants of the Arctic Circle are not exempt from these subterranean fires. The Icelander, always in alarm, has hunger staring him in the face, and a hundred feet of flame or ice to the right or left, under his Mount Hecla; for the great volcanoes are always found among terrible mountains. ”

“ We are then animals absolutely imperceptible; yet we are liable to be crushed by all that surrounds us, though our infinite littleness, so closely bordering on nothing, might seem to secure us from all accidents. ”

“ We, who are not fathers of the church, ought not to go beyond nor to stop short of truth; and the truth is, that of the houses destroyed, we cannot reckon that more than one out of every hundred thousand is destroyed by the fires necessary to the due performance of the operations of the world. ”

“ If there have always been crimes, there have always been virtues, too. Athens had such men as Socrates, as well as such as Anitus. Rome had Catos as well as Sullas. Nero frightened the world by his atrocities, but Titus, Trajan, and the Antonines consoled it by their benevolence. My friend will explain to Parouba who these great men were. Fortunately, I have Epictetus in my pocket. Epictetus was a slave, but the equal of Marcus Aurelius in mind. Listen, and may all who pretend to teach men hear what Epictetus says to himself: "God made me ”