A torch lighted in the forests of America set all Europe in conflagration.

We are astonished at thought, but sensation is equally wonderful.

Men, generally going with the stream, seldom judge for themselves, and purity of taste is almost as rare as talent.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

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.

Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies." (Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)

If there’s life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe’s insane asylum.