Aphorisms : Voltaire

 

Aphorisms

 

Brief and doctrinal sentence that is proposed as a rule in a science or art.

 

Voltaire

France: 1694-1778

1. The living are owed respect; to the dead, nothing but the truth.

 2. Chance is a word empty of meaning; nothing can exist without cause.

 3. We look for happiness, but without knowing where, like drunks looking for their home, knowing they have one.

 4. The pleasure that government provides must be very great, since there are so many who aspire to do so.

 5. Fanaticism is to superstition what delirium is to fever, what rage is to anger. He who has ecstasies, visions, who takes dreams for realities and his imaginations for prophecies is a novice fanatic with great hopes; he may soon get to kill for God's sake.

 6. Man rushes into error faster than rivers flow into the sea.

 7. The first who compared women to a flower was a poet; the second, an imbecile.

 8. Work keeps us away from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.

 9. In the contempt of ambition is one of the essential principles of happiness on earth.

 10. It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

 11. There is someone so intelligent that they learn from the experience of others.

 12. You have to know that there is no country on earth where love has not turned lovers into poets.

 13. I have decided to do what I like because it is good for my health.

 14. Civilization does not suppress barbarism; perfects it.

 15. Democracy only seems suitable for a very small country.

 16. Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

 17. Stupidity is an extraordinary disease; It is not the patient who suffers for it, but the others.

 18. Ignorance flatly affirms or denies; science doubts.

 19. The most fearsome of the diseases of the soul is the rage to dominate.

 20. Nature makes men eloquent in great passions and great interests.

 21. Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the crazy daughter of a sane mother.

 22. There is no problem that resists the continuous exercise of thought...

 23. I wouldn't want to be happy on condition of being an idiot.

 24. I loudly proclaim freedom of thought and die who does not think like me.

 25. If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.

 26. Luck is what happens when preparation and opportunity meet and merge.

 27. Everything goes well for people with a sweet and cheerful character.

 

With affection,

Ruben