It is with books as with the fires of our grates, everybody borrows a light from his neighbor to kindle his own, which in turn is communicated to others, and each partakes of all.

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics.

All is but illusion and disaster.

What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.

But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight.

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.

An infallible method of making fanatics is to persuade before you instruct.