Candide Quotes

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
― Voltaire, Candide: or, Optimism

“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“You're a bitter man," said Candide.
That's because I've lived," said Martin.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Let us cultivate our garden.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”
― Voltaire, Candide

“I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?'
That is a hard question,' said Candide.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Do you believe,' said Candide, 'that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?'
Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
― Voltaire, Candide

“She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.”
― Candide, Candide

“You are very harsh.'
'I have seen the world.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Come! you presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Let us work without reasoning,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything--in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.'
'You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“And ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I give you permission to throw me head-first into the sea.”
― Voltaire, Candide: or, Optimism

“What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide.
"That is because I know what life is," said Martin.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher. ”
― Voltaire, Candide: or, Optimism

“All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“He wanted to know how they prayed to God in El Dorado. "We do not pray to him at all," said the reverend sage. "We have nothing to ask of him. He has given us all we want, and we give him thanks continually.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Cela est bien, repondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Alas...I too have known love, that ruler of hearts, that soul of our soul: it's never brought me anything except one kiss and twenty kicks in the rump. How could such a beautiful cause produce such an abominable effect on you?”
― Voltaire, Candide: or, Optimism

“Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any expirienced in a town when it is under siege.”
― Voltaire, Candide