Home » Voltaire » Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Voltaire
Life Spirit Word

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Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.
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Astrology Astronomy Daughter Daughters Earth Mother Religion Superstition
A witty saying proves nothing.
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Nothing Saying Witty
There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
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Men
Fear follows crime and is its punishment.
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Crime Fear Punishment
To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
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In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.
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Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
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No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
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Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.
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The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.
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Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
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Lies Literary Men Satire
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
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God
This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
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Pleasure Self
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
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Succeed World
To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.
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God
Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.
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What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.
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All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.
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What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.
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It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.
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All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.
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We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.
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It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
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Tears are the silent language of grief.
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Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
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Will
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
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History Nothing
We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.
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Right Risk Tongue
The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.
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The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.
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Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
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Man
The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
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Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
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Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
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It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
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The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.
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Heart
Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
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We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.
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Being
Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.
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All styles are good except the tiresome kind.
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The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.
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Day Opportunity
It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.
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Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
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Privilege
Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.
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It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.
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When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
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Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
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We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.
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The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.
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Being
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
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Answers Man Questions
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
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