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If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?

Born in Provence, he [Bishop Myriel] easily became familiar with all the [Occitan] dialects of the South. [...] People loved this, and it had helped him greatly to get close to all kinds of temperaments. Whether he was in a cottage or up in a mountain, he would feel at home. He knew how to speak of the highest things using the lowliest vulgar expressions. By speaking every tongue, he entered every soul.

The beginning as well as then end of all his thoughts was hatred of human law; that hatred which, if it be not checked in its growth by some providential event, becomes, in a certain time, hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, and then hatred of creation, and reveals itself by a vague, brutal desire to injure some living being, it matters not who.

Table talk and lovers' talk equally elude the grasp; lovers' talk is clouds, table talk is smoke.

Ignorant readers are apt to judge a writer by his reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I like nothing but what makes for my purpose.

The peculiarity of punishment of this kind, in which what is pitiless, that is to say, what is brutalizing, predominates, is to transform little be little, by a slow stupefactions, a man into an animal, sometimes into a wild beast.

If we do not meet with agreeable things, we shall at least meet with something new.

It is noble to write as we think; it is the privilege of humanity.

"You must certainly have a vast estate," said Candide to the Turk."I have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us three great evils — idleness, vice, and want."

A discussion is good... a quarrel is better.

Mothers' arms are made of tenderness, and sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.

Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.