Great Throughts Treasury

"It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color."

"It is a serious question among them whether they [Africans] are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything."

"Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?"

"It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster."

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."

"Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?"

"It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music."

"It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge."

"It is demonstrable, said he, that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. Stones were made to be hewn and to construct castles, therefore My Lord has a magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Swine were intended to be eaten, therefore we eat pork all the year round: and they, who assert that everything is right, do not express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best."

"It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions."

"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere."

"It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books"

"It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere."

"It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind."

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

"It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love."

"It is not improbable that in hot countries, monkeys may have enslaved girls."

"It is new fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions."

"It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love."

"It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence."

"It is not known precisely where angels dwell -- whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode."

"It is only through timidity that states are lost."

"It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue."

"It is proved...that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose."

"It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it."

"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection."

"It is said that God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions."

"It is today, my dear, that I take a perilous leap."

"It is said that the present is pregnant with the future."

"It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow."

"It is well, 'replied Candide, but we must cultivate our garden."

"It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape."

"It requires ages to destroy a popular opinion."

"It must also be noted that until the present time this malady, like religious controversy, has been wholly confined to the continent of Europe."

"It was decided by the University of Coimbre that the sight of several persons being slowly burned in great ceremony is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes."

"It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him."

"It would be very singular that all nature, all the planets, should obey eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal five feet high, who, in contempt of these laws, could act as he pleased, solely according to his caprice."

"It would have been better to stay in the Paradise of Eldorado instead of returning to this accursed Europe. How right you are, my dear Martin! Everything is illusion and calamity!"

"Jesus Christ: A name that once upon a time was taken by God when he went to make a short sojourn in Judea, where, failing to declare his right name ...he was hanged.... Had it not been for this lucky turn..., the human race had been lost."

"I've had some experience of this love, this love that rules our hearts, which is the soul of our souls, all it got me was a kiss and twenty kicks in the ass. How could so beautiful to causes have produced in you such an abominable effect?"

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one."

"Just for the sake of amusement, ask each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who hasn’t often cursed his life, who hasn’t told himself he’s the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first."

"Labor rids us of three great evils - irksomeness, vice, and poverty."

"Jealousy is the art of doing yourself more harm than others."

"Laws enacted to help its citizens have also begun to scare them!"

"Let us cultivate our garden."

"Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world."

"Liberty of thought is the life of the soul."

"Let us work without theorizing, ‘tis the only way to make life endurable."

"Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting."