Skip to content

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.

La vie est hérissée de ces épines, et je n'y sais d'autre remède que de cultiver son jardin.

Original text (French)

Another quote →

Notes from Wikiquote

Letter to Pierre-Joseph Luneau de Boisjermain (21 October 1769), from Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: Correspondance [Garnier frères, Paris, 1882], vol. XIV, letter # 7692 (p. 478)

Topics

Gardening

More quotes by Voltaire

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

It is very strange that men should deny a creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.

Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (1764)

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

We have never intended to enlighten shoemakers and servants—this is up to apostles.

Whoe'er thou art, thy master see;
He was—or is—or is to be.

All Voltaire quotes →

You may also like

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

Show me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you what you are like.

Alfred Austin The Garden That I Love (1894)

Nothing is more completely the child of art than a garden.

Walter Scott

We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

Eve

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Voltaire (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.