Quotes

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Let us cultivate our garden.

"You're a bitter man," said Candide. "That's because I've lived," said Martin.

"Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst!

Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

"Let us work without reasoning," said Martin; "it is the only way to make life endurable."

In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.

Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.

Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege.

If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?

To follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by one's pencil, and the voice was her own voice saying without prompting undeniable, everlasting, contradictory things.

A light here required a shadow there.

Life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.

What is the meaning of life?... A simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.

Love had a thousand shapes.