How it works

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

Voltaire
Not a MindZip member yet
Work
Compliment
Nothing
Public
Style
Random

Explore more quotes

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.
Voltaire
The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.
Voltaire
God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Voltaire
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
Voltaire
Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.
Voltaire
Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
Voltaire
Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.
Voltaire
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
Voltaire
I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.
Voltaire
Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.
Voltaire
Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
Voltaire
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
Voltaire
We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.
Voltaire
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.
Voltaire
It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.
Voltaire
A witty saying proves nothing.
Voltaire
Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.
Voltaire
He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.
Voltaire
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.
Voltaire
Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.
Voltaire
An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
Voltaire
History should be written as philosophy.
Voltaire
Clever tyrants are never punished.
Voltaire
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Voltaire
How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.
Voltaire
The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
Voltaire
It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.
Voltaire
To hold a pen is to be at war.
Voltaire
God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
Voltaire
Common sense is not so common.
Voltaire
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
Voltaire
Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.
Voltaire
The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
Voltaire
Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.
Voltaire
History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.
Voltaire
I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.
Voltaire
We are rarely proud when we are alone.
Voltaire
We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.
Voltaire
God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.
Voltaire
Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.
Voltaire
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
Voltaire
The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.
Voltaire
Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.
Voltaire
To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
Voltaire
The multitude of books is making us ignorant.
Voltaire
Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.
Voltaire
Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire
Injustice in the end produces independence.
Voltaire