Voltaire: Trending quotes (page 5)

“It is sometimes said, common sense is very rare.”

Voltaire

On dit quelquefois, le sens commun est fort rare...
Philosophical Dictionary ('Sens Commun') https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Voltaire_-_Dictionnaire_philosophique_portatif,_6e_%C3%A9dition,_tome_2.djvu/209 (1767).
Compare Juvenal, Satires, viii:73:
Original Latin: rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa fortuna http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/juvenal/8.shtml.
Published translation in French (1731): Il est fort rare qu'on conserve le Sens commun dans une si haute fortune. https://books.google.com/books?id=lFBkAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA335&dq=%22Le+sens+commun%22+%22fort+rare%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjepqeYtNfLAhUS3mMKHb30BdkQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22il%20est%20fort%20rare%22&f=false
English translation: For rarely are civic sympathies [alternative translation: common sense] to be found in that rank".
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

Sense

“Thought depends largely on the stomach. In spite of this, those with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.”

Voltaire

C'est une plaisante chose que la pensée dépende absolument de l'estomac, et malgré cela les meilleurs estomacs ne soient pas les meilleurs penseurs.
Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert (20 August 1770)
Citas

Dependency

“Prejudice is an opinion without judgement.”

Voltaire

Le préjugé est une opinion sans jugement.
"Prejudices" (1764)
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

“Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.”

Voltaire

Tout homme sensé, tout homme de bien, doit avoir la secte chrétienne en horreur.
Examen important de milord Bolingbroke http://www.worldcat.org/title/examen-important-de-milord-bolingbroke-ecrit-sur-la-fin-de-1736-accompagne-des-notes-de-mr-m-editeur-de-ses-ouvrages/oclc/11007337 (1736): Conclusion
Citas

“Let us cultivate our garden.”

Voltaire

Citas, Candide (1759)

“The first who was king was a fortunate soldier:
Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.”

Voltaire Mérope

Le premier qui fut roi fut un soldat heureux:
Qui sert bien son pays n'a pas besoin d'aïeux.
Mérope, act I, scene III (1743). Borrowed from Lefranc de Pompignan's "Didon"
Citas

Country

“Quite a heavy weight, a name too quickly famous.”

Voltaire Henriade

C'est un poids bien pesant qu'un nom trop tôt fameux.
La Henriade, chant troisième, l.41 (1722)
Citas

“All styles are good except the boring kind.”

Voltaire L'enfant prodigue

Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre ennuyeux.
L'Enfant prodigue: comédie en vers dissillabes (1736), Preface
Citas

“It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.”

Voltaire

On dit que Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons.
Letter to François-Louis-Henri Leriche (6 February 1770)
In his Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750), Voltaire wrote: God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
Citas

God

“It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.”

Voltaire book Zadig

Il vaut mieux hasarder de sauver un coupable que de condamner un innocent.
Zadig (1747)
Citas

Personality

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

Voltaire

Citas, Candide (1759)

“Doctors are men who prescribe medicine of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, for human beings of which they know nothing.”

Voltaire

Les médecins administrent des médicaments dont ils savent très peu, à des malades dont ils savent moins, pour guérir des maladies dont ils ne savent rien.
This attribution to Voltaire appears in Strauss' Familiar Medical Quotations (1968), p. 394, and in publications as early as 1956 http://books.google.pt/books?id=lCtCAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Doctors+are+men+who+prescribe+medicine+of%22&dq=%22Doctors+are+men+who+prescribe+medicine+of%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=mbnWUsvDIfTB7Aaw_YD4Dw&redir_esc=y; the quotation in French does not, however, appear to be original, and is probably a relatively modern invention, only quoted in recent (21st century) published works, which attribute it to "Voltaire" without citing any source.
Attributed

Men , Disease

“While loving glory so much how can you persist in a plan which will cause you to lose it?”

Voltaire

En aimant tant la gloire, comment pouvez-vous vous obstiner à un projet qui vous la fera perdre?
Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 130 from Voltaire to Frederick II of Prussia, October 1757. http://perso.orange.fr/dboudin/VOLTAIRE/39/1757/3426.html
Citas

Love

“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”

Voltaire

Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire.
"Sixième discours: sur la nature de l'homme," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738)
Citas

Secret

“We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth.”

Voltaire

On doit des égards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la vérité.
Letter to M. de Grenonville (1719)
Citas

Truth , Dead

“A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity”

Voltaire

The critical review, or annals of literature, Volume XXVI http://books.google.es/books?id=aItKAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q&f=false, by A Society of Gentlemen (1768) p. 450

Men , Science , Falseness

“Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.”

Voltaire

La superstition met le monde entier en flammes; la philosophie les éteint.
Dictionnaire philosophique http://www17.us.archive.org/stream/dictionnairephil08volt/dictionnairephil08volt_djvu.txt (1822), "Superstition"
Citas

World

“A company of solemn tyrants is impervious to all seductions.”

Voltaire

Une compagnie de graves tyrans est inaccessible à toutes les séductions.
"Tyranny" (1764)
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

“But that a camel-merchant should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him.”

Voltaire

Mais qu’un marchand de chameaux excite une sédition dans sa bourgade; qu’associé à quelques malheureux coracites il leur persuade qu’il s’entretient avec l’ange Gabriel; qu’il se vante d’avoir été ravi au ciel, et d’y avoir reçu une partie de ce livre inintelligible qui fait frémir le sens commun à chaque page; que, pour faire respecter ce livre, il porte dans sa patrie le fer et la flamme; qu’il égorge les pères, qu’il ravisse les filles, qu’il donne aux vaincus le choix de sa religion ou de la mort, c’est assurément ce que nul homme ne peut excuser, à moins qu’il ne soit né Turc, et que la superstition n’étouffe en lui toute lumière naturelle.
Referring to Muhammad, in a letter to Frederick II of Prussia (December 1740), published in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Vol. 7 (1869), edited by Georges Avenel, p. 105
Citas

Death , Books , Religion , Angels

“ I asked my guide how it was possible the judicious part of them could suffer such incoherent prating? "We are obliged," said he, "to suffer it, because no one knows, when a brother rises up to hold forth, whether he will be moved by the spirit or by folly. In this uncertainty, we listen patiently to every one. We even allow our women to speak in public; two or three of them are often inspired at the same time, and then a most charming noise is heard in the Lord's house." "You have no priests, then?" said I. "No, no, friend," replied the Quaker; "heaven make us thankful!" Then opening one of the books of their sect, he read the following words in an emphatic tone: "'God forbid we should presume to ordain any one to receive the Holy Spirit on the Lord's day, in exclusion to the rest of the faithful!' ”

Voltaire

Further account of his conversations with Andrew Pit
The History of the Quakers (1762)

Women , God , Books , Faith