Quand celui à qui l'on parle ne comprend pas et celui qui parle ne se comprend pas, c'est de la métaphysiqueWhen he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics.

My dear young lady, when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the Inquisition, there's no knowing what you may do.

It is given to us to calculate, to weigh, to measure, to observe, this is natural philosophy; almost all the rest is chimera.

True prayer lies not in asking for a violation of natural law but in the acceptance of natural law as the unchangeable will of God.

We must cultivate our garden.

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.

It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

It is man´s faith to live either on agonies of fear and turmoil or in the prostration of boredom.