Voltaire

“ Be no longer a marquis; all the grandeur in the world is not to be compared to a good friend. You shall return with me to the country. I will teach you the trade; it is not very difficult; I will make you my partner, and we will live merrily in the remote corner where we were born."
Jeannot, quite transported, felt emotions of grief and joy, tenderness and shame; and he said within himself: "My fashionable friends have betrayed me, and Colin, whom I despised, is the only one who comes to relieve me." ”

“ But Micromegas was upon the spot, an exceeding good observer, and I have no mind to contradict any man. Be that as it may, after many windings and turnings, he arrived at the planet Saturn, and, accustomed as he was to the sight of novelties, he could not for his life repress a supercilious and conceited smile, which often escapes the wisest philosopher, when he perceived the smallness of that globe and the diminutive size of its inhabitants; for really Saturn is but about nine hundred times larger than this our earth, and the people of that country mere dwarfs, about a thousand fathoms high. ”

“ On Calumny.
Since beautiful 'twill be your fate
Emilia to incur much hate,
Almost one-half of human race
Will even curse you to your face;
Possessed of Genius' noblest fire,
With fear you will each breast inspire;
As you too easily confide
You'll often be betrayed, belied:
You ne'er of virtue made parade,
To hypocrites no court you've paid.
Therefore, of calumny beware,
Foe to the virtuous and the fair. ”

“ I have been born, and I exist in time, without knowing what time is. I am placed, as our wise men say, in the confines between two eternities, and yet I have no idea of eternity. I am composed of matter, I think, but have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I even am ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty I possess, like that of walking and digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands. ”

“ Of what consequence is it to the young marquis, your son, to know that Charlemagne instituted the twelve peers of France and that his successor stammered?"
"Admirably said," cried the governor; "the genius of young persons is smothered under a heap of useless knowledge; but of all sciences, the most absurd, and that which, in my opinion, is most calculated to stifle genius of every kind, is geometry. The objects about which this ridiculous science is conversant are surfaces, lines, and points that have no existence in nature. ”

“ The author speaks only of the Law of Nature, and not of religion and its awful mysteries.
Whether a self-existent [1] being laid
The world's foundations, out of nothing made,
If forming matter o'er it he presides,
And having shaped the mass, directs and guides;
Whether the soul, that bright ethereal spark
Of heavenly fire, too oft obscure and dark,
Makes of our senses one or acts alone;
We all are subject to the Almighty's throne.
But at His throne round which deep thunders roar
What homage shall we pay, how God adore?
Can jealousy affect the eternal mind? ”

“ The structure's of a simple taste,
Each ornament is justly placed;
The whole's arranged with so much care,
Art seems to copy nature there;
The beauteous structure fills the sight,
Not with surprise, but with delight.
The Temple was surrounded with a crowd of virtuosos, artists and connoisseurs of various kinds, who endeavored to enter, but did not succeed.
For criticism, severe and just,
Still stood before that shrine august,
Repelling all the efforts rude
Of Goths, who would in crowds intrude. ”

“ Urge not the links of the eternal chain,
'Tis false philosophy and wisdom vain.
The God who holds the chain can't be enchained; [2]
By His blest will are all events ordained:
He's just, nor easily to wrath gives way,
Why suffer we beneath so mild a sway: [3]
This is the fatal knot you should untie,
Our evils do you cure when you deny?
Men ever strove into the source to pry,
Of evil, whose existence you deny. ”

“ You have very justly observed, madam, that the grand end which a man should have in view is to succeed in the world. Can it possibly be said that this success is to be obtained by cultivating the sciences? Did anybody ever so much as think of talking of geometry in good company? Does any one ever inquire of a man of the world what star rises with the sun? ”

“ Our knight benumbed like ice, this said,
Threw himself flat upon his bed;
And, to conceal his anguish, tries
To feign asleep, sleep from him flies.
The beldame, pinching Robert, cried,
"Do you then slumber by your bride?
Dear but ungrateful spouse, you see
I am subdued, now yield to me;
The timid voice of struggling shame
Is stifled by my amorous flame;
Reign o'er my sense without control,
Since you reign powerful o'er my soul;
I die! just heaven say to what end
With virtue must our love contend? ”

“ In the chaise there was a young man dressed in the rustic manner, whose fresh countenance was replete with sweetness and gayety. His wife, a little woman of a brown complexion and an agreeable figure, though somewhat stout, sat close by him. As the carriage did not move on like the chaise of a petit-maitre, the traveller had sufficient time to contemplate the marquis, who was motionless and immersed in sorrow.
"Good God!" cried he, "I think that is Jeannot." ”

“ Virtue with happiness shall still be crowned;
You may with justice claim fair virtue's prize,
Since in you every royal virtue's found.
Upon the throne we now behold a sage,
A blessing which men rarely can obtain;
He who is able to instruct the age,
Is doubtless worthy o'er mankind to reign.
Presumptuous ignorance long has spurned the head
Of patient merit, which defenceless lay;
The fury dared on sciences to tread,
And virtue's self was forced to bear her sway.
Immersed in soft delights, the courtly train
Think man was never born the truth to know ”

“ Soon found means to remove Ernon out of the way;
Unknown to the prince he to exile was sent,
But there at a farm the old man lived content;
There with friends he lived happy, resigned to his fate,
And he wept for his master as well as the state;
Whilst with sloth and with pleasure the young duke content,
On the down of soft ease both his days and nights spent.
The murmurs by which oft his subjects expressed
Discontent, would however sometimes break his rest,
But that distant din, which he hardly could hear,
Grows weak in its course, and scarce beats on his ear ”

“ Pandora's prime thus winged with pleasure flew,
Then she in languor lived, nor wherefore knew.
She that devotes to love her life's first spring,
As years increase can do no other thing;
For e'en to gods inconstancy is known,
And those who dwell in heaven to change are prone.
Pandora of her favors had been free
To gods who left her; happening then to see
A satyr who through plains and meadows strayed,
Smit with his mien, she love-advances made.
To these amours our race existence owes,
From such amusements all mankind arose ”

“ At last one lover touched both female friends,
And strange to tell! here all their Friendship ends;
Lisis and Chloe Friendship's shrine forsake,
And the high road to Hatred's temple take.
The beauteous Zara shone forth in her turn,
With eyes that languish, whilst our hearts they burn:
"What languor," said she, "reigns in this abode!
By that sad goddess, say what joy's bestowed?
Here dismal melancholy dwells alone,
For love's soft joys are ever here unknown." ”

“ To this declaration Micromegas replied:
"If you were not a philosopher, I should be afraid of mortifying your pride by telling you that the term of our lives is seven hundred times longer than the length of your existence; but you are very sensible that when the texture of the body is resolved, in order to reanimate nature in another form, which is the consequence of what we call death — when that moment of change arrives, there is not the least difference betwixt having lived a whole eternity or a single day. ”

“ And the duke was the happiest mortal alive,
Since permitted his mistress in litter to drive.
"All's not over," said Amida, "you must conquer and reign,
Now's the time, or to die, or your crown to regain;
You're not wanting in courage, Ernon's faithful, and I
Am resolved to serve you and my country, or die.
Then make no delay, but to Ernon repair,
To ask pardon for all he has suffered take care;
To serve you what remains of his life he'll expose,
Return in three days, and then fall on your foes ”

“ This eager and unreasonable desire of transmitting useless stories to posterity, and of fixing the attention of future ages upon common events, proceeds from a weakness extremely incident to those who have lived in courts, and have unhappily been engaged in the management of public affairs. They consider the court in which they have lived as the most magnificent in the world; their king as the greatest monarch: and the affairs in which they have been concerned as the most important that ever were transacted: and they vainly imagine, that posterity will view them in the same light. ”

“ A sort of terror seized our knight.
The beldame, with familiar tone,
Accosts him thus: "I see, my son,
By your dejected, thoughtful air
Your heart feels some corroding care:
Relate to me your secret grief:
(To talk of woes gives some relief)
Although your case be e'er so bad,
Some consolation may be had.
I've long beheld this earthly stage,
And wisdom must increase with age. ”

“ At length, the inhabitant of Saturn discerned something almost imperceptible moving between two waves in the Baltic. This was no other than a whale, which, in a dextrous manner, he caught with his little finger, and, placing it on the nail of his thumb, showed it to the Sirian, who laughed heartily at the excessive smallness peculiar to the inhabitants of this our globe. The Saturnian, by this time convinced that our world was inhabited, began to imagine we had no other animals than whales ”

“ Those who never travel but in a post-chaise or berlin, will doubtless be astonished at the equipages used above, for we that strut upon this little molehill are at a loss to conceive anything that surpasses our own customs. But our traveller was a wonderful adept in the laws of gravitation, together with the whole force of attraction and repulsion, and made such seasonable use of his knowledge that sometimes by the help of a sunbeam, and sometimes by the convenience of a comet, he and his retinue glided from sphere to sphere, as the bird hops from one bough to another. ”

“ In Latin verse can reason right,
Plato with Virgil can unite,
Who vindicates high heaven to man,
And quite subverts Lucretius' plan.
That cardinal, whom every one must know by this picture, desired me one day to accompany him to the Temple of Taste. "'Tis a place," said he, "which resembles the Temple of Friendship, which everybody speaks of, which few visit, and which most of those who travel to it, have never thoroughly examined." ”

“ I was surprised that I did not meet at the sanctuary several persons, who, sixty or eighty years ago, passed for the greatest favorites of the God of Taste. The Pavillons, the Benserades, the Pellissons, the Segraises, the St. Évremonds, the Balzacs, the Voitures, were no longer in possession of the first places. They possessed them heretofore, said one of my guides; they made a figure before the bright period of the learned world; but they have at length given place to men of real genius. ”

“ If we may believe Pope, man is not capable of discovering the reason why the satellites of Jove are less than Jove himself; he is herein mistaken, such an error as this may well be overlooked in so fine a genius. Every smatterer in mathematics could have told Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Pope, that if the satellites of Jove had equalled him in magnitude, they could not have moved round him; but no mathematician is able to discover the regular gradation in the bodies of the solar system. ”

“ There is commonplace among princes, as well as among the rest of mankind; yet such is the itch of writing, that no sooner is a prince dead, than the world is filled with volumes under the title of memoirs and histories of his life, and anecdotes of his court. ”

“ Newton the compass takes, he lifts the veil,
He makes truth's light o'er ignorance prevail:
With learned hand he to my eye displays
That star's bright robe which seasons rules and days;
The sparkling diamond's variegated dyes,
With gorgeous lustre dazzle human eyes;
Each ray's pure substance to spectators show
The various colors of fair Iris's Bow;
Blended, they light impart to mortal eyes,
They vivify the world, and fill the skies. ”

“ He acknowledges with all mankind that there is evil as well as good on the earth; he owns that no philosopher has ever been able to explain the nature of moral and physical evil. He asserts that Bayle, the greatest master of the art of reasoning that ever wrote, has only taught to doubt, and that he combats himself; he owns that man's understanding is as weak as his life is miserable. ”

“ Whilst the chief led a life of unceasing delight,
Whilst joy winged each hour, and love triumphed at night,
In the stable much hardship and woe the prince bore,
Those his comrades were now who were subjects before. ”

“ Nature is not confined to any determinate quantity, or any determinate form. No planet moves in a curve completely regular; there is nothing in Nature of a figure exactly mathematical; no fixed quantity is required for any operation: Nature is never very strict or rigid in her method of proceeding. It is, therefore, absurd to advance, that the removal of an atom from the earth might be the cause of its destruction.
This holds, in like manner, with regard to events. The cause of every event is contained in some precedent event; this no philosopher has ever called in question. ”

“ The marchioness then looked upon herself as the mother of a wit, and gave a supper to the wits of Paris. The young man's brain was soon turned; he acquired the art of speaking without knowing his own meaning, and he became perfect in the habit of being good for nothing. When his father found that he was so eloquent he very much regretted that his son had not learned Latin ”

“ A young man of quality endowed with a happy genius is neither a painter, a musician, an architect, nor a graver; but he makes all these arts flourish by generously encouraging them. It is, doubtless, better to patronize than to practise them. It is enough for the young marquis to have a taste; it is the business of artists to exert themselves for him ”

“ As they have a glaring reputation, we are desirous of knowing the most minute circumstances of their lives; for such is the weakness of mankind, that they admire those who have rendered themselves remarkable for wickedness, and talk with greater pleasure of the destroyer than of the founder of an empire.
As for those princes who have neither distinguished themselves in peace nor in war; who have neither been remarkable for great virtues nor great vices; their lives furnish so little matter, either for imitation or instruction, that they are not worthy of being committed to writing. ”

“ But one will find everywhere some few persons of good sense, who know how to make the best of their portion and thank the author of nature for his bounty. There is a profusion of variety scattered through the universe, and yet there is an admirable vein of uniformity that runs through the whole; for example, all thinking beings are different among themselves, though at bottom they resemble one another in the powers and passions of the soul. Matter, though interminable, hath different properties in every sphere. ”

“ He surveyed the two celestial strangers from top to toe, and maintained to their faces that their persons, their fashions, their suns, and their stars were created solely for the use of man. At this wild assertion our two travellers were seized with a fit of that uncontrollable laughter, which (according to Homer) is the portion of the immortal gods; their bellies quivered, their shoulders rose and fell, and, during these convulsions, the vessel fell from the Sirian's nail into the Saturnian's pocket, where these worthy people searched for it a long time with great diligence. ”