8 quotes
Elements, animals, humans, everything is at war.
Poem on the Lisbon Disaster (1756)
If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?
Candide (1759)
Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.
Dictionnaire philosophique (1785)
At fitful moments in our pain-racked life
The hand of pleasure wipes away our tears;
But pleasure passes like a fleeting shade,
And leaves a legacy of pain and loss.
Happiness is but a dream, and only pain is real. I have thought so for eighty-four years, and I know of no better plan than to resign myself to the inevitable, and reflect that flies were born to be devoured by spiders, and man to be consumed by care.
Edgar Saltus in The Philosophy of Disenchantment (1885)
A caliph once, when his last hour had come,
This prayer addressed to him he reverenced:
"To thee, sole and all-powerful king, I bear
What thou dost lack in thy immensity—
Evil and ignorance, distress and sin."
He might have added one thing further—hope.
Life has so few charms!
And yet we desire it.
No more pleasure, no more power,
in the horrors of death.
A dead lion is not worth
a midge that breathes.
O unfortunate mortal!
Whether your soul is enjoying
the moment given to you,
or whether death is ending it,
both are torture.
It is better not to have been born.
Superstition excites storms; philosophy appeases them.
Attributed A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1902)