“It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.”
C'est une des superstitions de l'esprit humain d'avoir imaginé que la virginité pouvait être une vertu.
Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
This quotation and the three that follow directly below are from the so-called Leningrad Notebook, also known as Le Sottisier; it is one of several posthumously published notebooks of Voltaire.
Citas
Original
C'est une des superstitions de l'esprit humain d'avoir imaginé que la virginité pouvait être une vertu.
Sottisier
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Voltaire 167
French writer, historian, and philosopher 1694–1778Related quotes

Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 3, “Emancipation and Ethics” (p. 12)

Letter to his son, John Quincy Adams (13 November 1816)
1810s
Source: The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

Calvin to the Foreigners’ Church in London, 1552-10-27, in George Cornelius Gorham, Gleanings of a few scattered ears, during the period of Reformation in England and of the times immediately succeeding : A.D. 1533 to A.D. 1588 http://books.google.com/books?vid=0bbTMcT6wXFWRHGP&id=esICAAAAQAAJ&printsec=titlepage&dq=%22george+cornelius+gorham%22 (London: Bell and Daldy, 1857), p. 285.

John Calvin, https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1556352468 Epistle CCC to the French church in London, 27th September 1552; translated by Jules Bonnet, p.362