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Voltaire. Candide, ou l'Optimisme [Candide: or, All for the Best]. Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759, ch. 6.

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Voltaire. Candide, edited by Nicholas Cronk. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, ch. 6.

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All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

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Voltaire. Candide, ou l'Optimisme [Candide: or, All for the Best]. Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759, ch. 1.

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Voltaire. Candide, edited by Nicholas Cronk. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, ch. 1.

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If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

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Voltaire. Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs [Letter to the author of The Three Impostors]. 10 Nov. 1770.

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I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

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Voltaire. Candide, ou l'Optimisme [Candide: or, All for the Best]. Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759, ch. 12.

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Voltaire. Candide, edited by Nicholas Cronk. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, ch. 12.

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I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

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Voltaire. Letter to Etienne Noel Damilaville. 16 May 1767.

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In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other.

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Voltaire. "Argent [Money]." Dictionnaire Philosophique [Philosophical Dictionary]. c. 1764.

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I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.

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Voltaire. Note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagniere. 28 Feb. 1778.

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We must cultivate our garden.

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Voltaire. Candide, ou l'Optimisme [Candide: or, All for the Best]. Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759, ch. 30.

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Voltaire. Candide, edited by Nicholas Cronk. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, ch. 30.

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Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.

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Voltaire. Candide, ou l'Optimisme [Candide: or, All for the Best]. Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759, ch. 30.

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Voltaire. Candide, edited by Nicholas Cronk. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, ch. 30.

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She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.

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Voltaire. Candide, ou l'Optimisme [Candide: or, All for the Best]. Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759, ch. 1.

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Voltaire. Candide, edited by Nicholas Cronk. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, ch. 1.

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Love truth, but pardon error.

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Voltaire [published anonymously]. "Luxe [Luxury]." Dictionnaire Philosophique Portatif. Geneva: Gabriel Grasset, 1764.

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Voltaire. "Luxury." Philosophical Dictionary, translated by Theodore Besterman. Penguin Classics, 1984.

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All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; for, after all, if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunégonde, if you hadn’t been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn’t traveled across America on foot, if you hadn’t given a good sword thrust to the baron, if you hadn’t lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn’t be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios.

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Voltaire. Candide, ou l'Optimisme [Candide: or, All for the Best]. Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759, ch. 30.

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Voltaire. Candide, edited by Nicholas Cronk. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, ch. 30.

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Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege.

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Voltaire. Candide, ou l'Optimisme [Candide: or, All for the Best]. Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759, ch. 20.

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Voltaire. Candide, edited by Nicholas Cronk. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, ch. 20.

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Do you believe that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?

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Voltaire. Candide, ou l'Optimisme [Candide: or, All for the Best]. Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759, ch. 21.

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Voltaire. Candide, edited by Nicholas Cronk. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016, ch. 21.

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It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.