Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed, but when the object is to preserve them it is no longer so.
To succeed in chaining the multitude, you must seem to wear the same fetters.
We shall not extend our views into the depths of theology. God preserve us from such presumption. Humble faith is enough for us. We never assume any other part than that of a mere historian.
Pliny, the naturalist relying, evidently, on the authority of Flavius Josephus-calls the Essenes, gens aeterna in quo nemo nascitur—a perpetual family in which no one is ever born-because the Essenes very rarely married. The description has been since applied to our monks.
History supplies little beyond a list of those who have accommodated themselves with the property of others.
The most beautiful of all emblems is that of God, whom Timaeus of Locris describes under the image of “A circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.”
In metaphysics and in morals, the ancients have said everything. We always encounter or repeat them.
Reasonable enthusiasm is the patrimony of great poets.
Homer never produces tears. The true poet, according to my idea, is he who touches the soul and softens it; others are only fine speakers. I am far from proposing this opinion as a rule. “I give my opinion,” says Montaigne, “not as being good, but as being my own.”
We will take this opportunity to observe that neither the Jews nor any other people ever thought of fixing persons to the cross by nails; and that there is not even a single instance of it. It is the fiction of some painter, built upon an opinion completely erroneous.
It is very likely that the more ancient fables, in the style of those attributed to Aesop, were invented by the first subjugated people. Free men would not have had occasion to disguise the truth; a tyrant can scarcely be spoken to except in parables; and at present, even this is a dangerous liberty.
What is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason. I have no merit in thinking that this eternal and infinite being, whom I consider as virtue, as goodness itself, is desirous that I should be good and virtuous. Faith consists in believing not what seems true, but what seems false to our understanding.
Let us ever discriminate between fable and truth, and keep our minds in the same subjection with respect to whatever surprises and astonishes us, as with respect to whatever appears perfectly conformable to their circumscribed and narrow views.
It is a great evil to be a heretic; but is it a great good to maintain orthodoxy by soldiers and executioners? Would it not be better that every man should eat his bread in peace under the shade of his own fig tree? I suggest so bold a proposition with fear and trembling.
If you are desirous to prevent the overrunning of a state by any sect, show it toleration.
Enthusiasm is not always the companion of total ignorance, it is often that of erroneous information.
What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them.
All certainty which does not consist in mathematical demonstration is nothing more than the highest probability ; there is no other historical certainty.
But we may say with respect to rules for writing history, as of those for all the intellectual arts-there are many precepts, but few masters.
If you are desirous of obtaining a great name, of becoming the founder of a sect or establishment, be completely mad; but be sure that your madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age. Have in your madness reason enough to guide your extravagances; and do not forget to be excessively opinionated and obstinate. It is certainly possible that you may get hanged; but if you escape hanging, you will have altars erected to you.
It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.
I never was in Judaea, thank Cod! and I never will go (here. I have met with men of all nations who have returned from it, and they have all of them told me that the situation of Jerusalem is horrible; that all the land round it is stony; that the mountains are bare; that the famous river Jordan is not more than forty feet wide; that the only good spot in the country is Jericho; in short, they all spoke of it as St. Jerome did, who resided a long time in Bethlehem, and describes the country as the refuse and rubbish of nature.
From Titus Livius to de Thou, inclusively, all historians have been infected with prodigies.
But where are the men to be found who will dare to speak out?
Laws have proceeded, in almost every state, from the interest of the legislator, from the urgency of the moment, from ignorance, and from superstition, and have accordingly been made at random, and irregularly, just as cities have been built.... It was only after London had been reduced to ashes that it became fit to live in. The streets, after that catastrophe, were widened and straightened. If you are desirous of having good laws, burn those which you have at present, and make fresh ones.
We have seen that man in general, one with another, or (as it is expressed) on the average, does not live above two-and-twenty years; and during these two-and-twenty years he is liable to two-and-twenty thousand evils, many of which are incurable. Yet even in this dreadful state men still strut and pose on the stage of life; they make love at the risk of destruction, intrigue, carry on war, and form projects, just as if they were to live in luxury and happiness for a thousand ages.
More than half the habitable world is still peopled with two-footed animals, who live in the horrible state approaching pure nature, existing and clothing themselves with difficulty, scarcely enjoying the gift of speech, scarcely perceiving that they are unfortunate, and living and dying almost without knowing it.
Define your terms, you will permit me again to say, or we shall never understand one another.
After being extricated from one slough for a time, mankind is soon plunged into another. To ages of civilization succeed ages of barbarism; that barbarism is again expelled and again reappears: it is the regular alternation of day and night.
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one part of the citizens to give it to the other.
Let each of us boldly and honestly say: How little it is that I really know!
There is but one morality, as there is but one geometry.
It requires ages to destroy a popular opinion.
The origin of evil has always been an abyss, the depth of which no one has been able to sound.
Let us place at the end of every chapter of metaphysics the two letters used by the Roman judges when they did not understand a pleading. N L.—non liquet—it is not clear.
Nothing is so common as to imitate the practice of enemies, and to use their weapons.
St. Augustine was the first who brought this strange notion [original sin] into credit: a notion worthy of the warm and romantic brain of an African debauchee and penitent, a Manichaean and Christian, tolerant and a persecutor—who passed his life in perpetual self-contradiction.
The Epistles of St. Paul are so sublime that it is often difficult to understand them.
I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship, towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more, and in fewer words, than prose.
In every author let us distinguish the man from his works. Racine wrote like Virgil, but he became a Jansenist through weakness; and he died as the result of no less remarkable a weakness—because a man, passing through a gallery, did not give him a glance. I am very sorry for all this; but it does not make the part of Phaedra an
y the less admirable.
When a country possesses a great number of idlers, you may be sure that it is well populated; for these idlers are lodged, clothed, fed, amused, and respected by those who work. The principal object, however, is not to possess a superfluity of men, but to render such as we have as little unhappy as possible.
Pleasantry when it requires explanation ceases to be pleasantry, and a commentator on bon mots is seldom capable of conveying them.
Dr. Swift is Rabelais sober, and living in good company.
It is with books as with the fires in our grates: everybody borrows a light from his neighbor to kindle his own, which is in turn communicated to others, and each partakes of all.
Every chief of a philosophical sect has been something of a quack, but the greatest of all have been those who have aspired to govern. Cromwell was the most terrible of all quacks, and appeared precisely at the time when he could succeed. Under Elizabeth he would have been hanged; under Charles II, laughed at. Fortunately for himself he came at a time when people were disgusted with kings; his son followed, when they were weary of protectors.
The progress of rivers to the sea is not as rapid as that of man to error.
I have taken St. Thomas of Didymus for my patron saint, who always insisted on an examination with his own hands.
The necessity of saying something, the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say. and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous.
We hold the Jews in horror, and we insist that all which has been written by them, and collected by us, bears the stamp of Divinity. There never was so palpable a contradiction.
Sors tua mortalis, non est mortale quod optas.—Mortal thy fate, thy wishes those of gods.
I will say, in the spirit of the wise Locke: Philosophy consists in stopping when the torch of physical science fails us.
Thus goes the world under the empire of fortune, which is nothing but necessity, insurmountable fatality. Fortuna saevo laeta negatio. She makes us blindly play her terrible game, and we never see beneath the cards.
The true charter of liberty is independence, maintained by force.
We should say to every individual: “Remember thy dignity as a man.”
Man is not born wicked: he becomes so, as he becomes sick.
We learn more from the single experiments of the Abbé Nollet than from all the philosophical works of antiquity.
Translation by H. I. Woolf
Candide
CHAPTER I
How Candide Was Brought Up in a Noble Castle and How He Was Expelled from the Same
IN THE castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh in Westphalia there lived a youth, endowed by Nature with the most gentle character. His face was the expression of his soul. His judgment was quite honest and he was extremely simple-minded; and this was the reason, I think, that he was named Candide. Old servants in the house suspected that he was the son of the Baron’s sister and a decent honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom this young lady would never marry because he could only prove seventy-one quarterings, and the rest of his genealogical tree was lost, owing to the injuries of time. The Baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his castle possessed a door and windows. His Great Hall was even decorated with a piece of tapestry. The dogs in his stableyards formed a pack of hounds when necessary; his grooms were his huntsmen; the village curate was his Grand Almoner. They all called him “My Lord,” and laughed heartily at his stories. The Baroness weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, was therefore greatly respected, and did the honors of the house with a dignity which rendered her still more respectable. Her daughter Cunegonde, aged seventeen, was rosy-cheeked, fresh, plump and tempting. The Baron’s son appeared in every respect worthy of his father. The tutor Pangloss was the oracle of the house, and little Candide followed his lessons with all the candor of his age and character. Pangloss taught metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology. He proved admirably that there is no effect without a cause and that in this best of all possible worlds, My Lord the Baron’s castle was the best of castles and his wife the best of all possible Baronesses. “ ’Tis demonstrated,” said he, “that things cannot be otherwise; for, since everything is made for an end, everything is necessarily for the best end. Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches. Stones were formed to be quarried and to build castles; and My Lord has a very noble castle; the greatest Baron in the province should have the best house; and as pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all the year round; consequently, those who have asserted that all is well talk nonsense; they ought to have said that all is for the best.” Candide listened attentively and believed innocently; for he thought Mademoiselle Cunegonde extremely beautiful, although he was never bold enough to tell her so. He decided that after the happiness of being born Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, the second degree of happiness was to be Mademoiselle Cunegonde; the third, to see her every day; and the fourth to listen to Doctor Pangloss, the greatest philosopher of the province and therefore of the whole world. One day when Cunegonde was walking near the castle, in a little wood which was called The Park, she observed Doctor Pangloss in the bushes, giving a lesson in experimental physics to her mother’s waiting-maid, a very pretty and docile brunette. Mademoiselle Cunegonde had a great inclination for science and watched breathlessly the reiterated experiments she witnessed; she observed clearly the Doctor’s sufficient reason, the effects and the causes, and returned home very much excited, pensive, filled with the desire of learning, reflecting that she might be the sufficient reason of young Candide and that he might be hers. On her way back to the castle she met Candide and blushed; Candide also blushed. She bade him good morning in a hesitating voice; Candide replied without knowing what he was saying. Next day, when they left the table after dinner, Cunegonde and Candide found themselves behind a screen; Cunegonde dropped her handkerchief, Candide picked it up; she innocently held his hand; the young man innocently kissed the young lady’s hand with remarkable vivacity, tenderness and grace; their lips met, their eyes sparkled, their knees trembled, their hands wandered. Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh passed near the screen, and, observing this cause and effect, expelled Candide from the castle by kicking him in the backside frequently and hard. Cunegonde swooned; when she recovered her senses, the Baroness slapped her in the face; and all was in consternation in the noblest and most agreeable of all possible castles.
CHAPTER II
What Happened to Candide Among the Bulgarians
Candide, expelled from the earthly paradise, wandered for a long time without knowing where he was going, turning up his eyes to Heaven, gazing back frequently at the noblest of castles which held the most beautiful of young Baronesses; he lay down to sleep supperless between two furrows in the open fields; it snowed heavily in large flakes. The next morning the shivering Candide, penniless, dying of cold and exhaustion, dragged himself toward the neighboring town, which was called Waldberghoff-trarbk-dikdorff. He halted sadly at the door of an inn. Two men dressed in blue noticed him. “Comrade,” said one, “there’s a well-built young man of the right height.” They went up to Candide and very civilly invited him to dinner. “Gentlemen,” said Candide with charming modesty, “you do me a great honor, but I have no money to pay my share.” “Ah, sir,” said one of the men in blue, “persons of your figure and merit never pay anything; are you not five feet five tall?” “Yes, gentlemen,” said he, bowing, “that is my height.” “Ah, sir, come to table; we will not only pay your expenses, we will never allow a man like you to be short of money; men were only made to help each other.” “You are in the right,” said Candide, “that is what Doctor Pangloss was always telling me, and I see that everything is for the best.” They begged him to accept a few crowns, he took them and wished to give them an i o u; they refused to take it and all sat down to table. “Do you not love tenderly ..
.” “Oh, yes,” said he. “I love Mademoiselle Cunegonde tenderly.” “No,” said one of the gentlemen. “We were asking if you do not tenderly love the King of the Bulgarians.” “Not a bit,” said he, “for I have never seen him.” “What! He is the most charming of Kings, and you must drink his health.” “Oh, gladly, gentlemen.” And he drank. “That is sufficient,” he was told. “You are now the support, the aid, the defender, the hero of the Bulgarians; your fortune is made and your glory assured.” They immediately put irons on his legs and took him to a regiment. He was made to turn to the right and left, to raise the ramrod and return the ramrod, to take aim, to fire, to double up, and he was given thirty strokes with a stick; the next day he drilled not quite so badly, and received only twenty strokes; the day after, he only had ten and was looked on as a prodigy by his comrades. Candide was completely mystified and could not make out how he was a hero. One fine spring day he thought he would take a walk, going straight ahead, in the belief that to use his legs as he pleased was a privilege of the human species as well as of animals. He had not gone two leagues when four other heroes, each six feet tall, fell upon him, bound him and dragged him back to a cell. He was asked by his judges whether he would rather be thrashed thirty-six times by the whole regiment or receive a dozen lead bullets at once in his brain. Although he protested that men’s wills are free and that he wanted neither one nor the other, he had to make a choice; by virtue of that gift of God which is called liberty, he determined to run the gauntlet thirty-six times and actually did so twice. There were two thousand men in the regiment. That made four thousand strokes which laid bare the muscles and nerves from his neck to his backside. As they were about to proceed to a third turn, Candide, utterly exhausted, begged as a favor that they would be so kind as to smash his head; he obtained this favor; they bound his eyes and he was made to kneel down. At that moment the King of the Bulgarians came by and inquired the victim’s crime; and as this King was possessed of a vast genius, he perceived from what he learned about Candide that he was a young metaphysician very ignorant in worldly matters, and therefore pardoned him with a clemency which will be praised in all newspapers and all ages. An honest surgeon healed Candide in three weeks with the ointments recommended by Dioscorides.
The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 21