"Voltaire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thinkers along religious and philosophic lines, men who have molded the thought and lives of a multitude of persons. Among these intellectual giants born within fifteen years of Mr. Edwards were John Wesley, George Whitefield, Swedenborg, Voltaire, ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... all-good Creator for the benefit of man, his highest product; while other thinkers regarded Spinozism as the only rational system, indeed as the last word of all speculative metaphysics; for them logical thought necessarily led to pantheism and determinism. In France, after reaching its climax in Voltaire, it ended in materialism, atheism, and fatalism; and in England, where it had developed the empiricism of Locke, it came to grief in the scepticism of Hume. If we can know only our impressions, then rational theology, cosmology, and psychology are impossible, and it is futile to philosophize ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... upon the stage. This blending of true elegance with broad farce is a novelty in modern literature. We are reminded of the songs of the Mystae on the meadows of Elysium in the Frogs. Scarron and Voltaire, through the French imitators of Tassoni, took lessons from his caricature of Saturn, the old diseased senator traveling in a sedan chair to the celestial parliament, with a clyster-pipe in front of him and his seat upon a close stool. Moliere and Swift, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Kneeland for blasphemy promoted the spread of infidel opinions. I do not now recollect that I heard Bard express any opinion as to a future state of existence. In that particular he was probably an agnostic. When in later years I saw a plaster cast of the head of Voltaire at the Cambridge Museum of Comparative Anatomy, I was impressed with the resemblance between Bard's head ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... him came to the top, his face growing as red as his hair. "France, that has always been in rebellion for liberty and reason. France, that has always assailed superstition with the club of Rabelais or the rapier of Voltaire. France, at whose first council table sits the sublime figure of Julian the Apostate. France, where a man said only the other day those splendid unanswerable words"—with a superb gesture—"'we have extinguished in heaven those lights that men shall ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... for "Nick Carter" she gave them those classics, "The Rollo Books"; and to the French-Canadians she gave, reasonably enough, the acknowledged masters of their language, Voltaire, Balzac, and Flaubert, till the horrified priest forbade from the pulpit any of his simple-minded flock to enter "that temple of sin, the public library." She had little classes in art-criticism for the young ladies in town, explaining to them with ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... not revealed directly to our senses. It is easy enough to conceive of beings endowed with a more perfect perception of the external world, both in its condition and the number of objects it presents, than we have, by means of other organs of outward perception. Voltaire, in one of his philosophical romances, represents an inhabitant of one of the planets of the Dog-Star as inquiring of the Secretary of the Academy of Sciences in the planet of Saturn, at which he had recently arrived in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... of James I. But their nature is farther from our nature. They sparkle but never warm. They are witty but leave no impression. I might almost go further, and say that they are wicked but never allure. "When Voltaire came to visit the Great Congreve," says Thackeray, "the latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation; and in this, perhaps, the great Congreve was not far wrong. A touch of Steele's tenderness ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... represented the cardinal points of this century's ideas, debating the very same terrible problem which brought him so much suffering, that of the new belief which the democracy of the coming century awaits. And, ah! since the days of the immediate ancestors, since the days of Voltaire and Diderot and Rousseau how incessantly had billows of ideas followed and jostled one another, the older ones giving birth to new ones, and all breaking and bounding in a tempest in which it was becoming so difficult to distinguish anything ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Oscard, "I see her, talking to an old gentleman who looks like Voltaire. I shall give her a chance of recognising me before the evening is out. I don't mind being ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's works by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of Father Hardouin's historic doubts. The fanaticism of an outraged liberalism, produced by centuries of injustice and despotism, is but a poor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of Louis XIV., were mere servile imitators of the court at Versailles, and the culture and the civilization for which they hungered were French—only French; and for Frederick, an intimate companionship with Voltaire was his supreme desire. But a closer view of the witty, cynical Frenchman wrought a wonderful change. The finely pointed shafts of ridicule when aimed at himself were not so entertaining. And his guest, no longer persona grata, was escorted over ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... this phrase called for some sort of elucidation. "I always feel grateful," said she, "to that Frenchman—Voltaire or Talleyrand or Rochefoucauld or somebody—who said language was invented to conceal our thoughts. That was what you ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... its elements of mystery and infinity touch all their pages. In an equal degree, though with a further departure from accredited beliefs, and with a greater effect from philosophical or humanitarian influences, has it wrought itself into the genius of Goethe, Carlyle and Hugo. Even the pages of Voltaire, Shelley and Heine have been touched by its magic influence; their words glow with its great interests, and bloom into beauty through its inspiration. None of these is more affected by religion than George Eliot has been; nor does it form a greater element in ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... do not expressly say: but it is a corollary from their doctrine, which we may discover for ourselves, if we will look at the nations round us now, if we will look at all the nations which have been. Even Voltaire himself acknowledged that; and when he pointed to the Chinese as the most prosperous nation upon earth, ascribed their prosperity uniformly to their virtue. We now know that he was wrong in fact: for we ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... of parchment. For this young man in the skyblue sash is William Penn. He is making his famous treaty with the Indians. It is one of the most remarkable instruments ever completed. 'It is the only treaty,' Voltaire declares, 'that was ever made without an oath, and the only treaty that never was broken.' By means of this treaty with the Indians, William Penn is beginning to realize the greatest aspiration of his life. For ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... said la Peyrade, sarcastically, "I shouldn't be at all surprised if Pere Anselme's young collaborator was that very Felix Phellion. Voltaire always kept very close relations with the Jesuits who brought him up; but he never talked ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... religious bent, which led to the reading of such books as Klopstock's works, but he neither cared for God's word, nor had he any compunction for trampling upon God's law. In his library, now numbering about three hundred books, no Bible was found. Cicero and Horace, Moliere and Voltaire, he knew and valued, but of the Holy Scriptures he was grossly ignorant, and as indifferent to them as he was ignorant of them. Twice a year, according to prevailing custom, he went to the Lord's Supper, like others who ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... 'Anti-Byron,' coming out, to prove that I have formed a conspiracy to overthrow, by rhyme, all religion and government, and have already made great progress! It is not very scurrilous, but serious and ethereal. I never felt myself important, till I saw and heard of my being such a little Voltaire as to induce such a production. Murray would not publish it, for which he was a fool, and so I told him; but some one else will, doubtless. 'Something too much ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... distinct whole. His choice of reading was ruled by a fastidious need. He was fond of travels for a rainy day, and knew Mandeville; but at other times he took up books which seem to lie quite aside from his known purposes. [Footnote: See Appendix III.] Voltaire appears to have attracted him constantly; he read him in the original, together with Rousseau. At one time he examined Pascal, at another he read something of Corneille and a part of Racine. Of the English dramatists, he seems at this time to have tried only Massinger; "Inchbald's ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... philosophic movement was then at its height in France. The philosophes desired freedom of thought in religion, constitutional liberty, and the abolition of privilege of all kinds. They speculated as to the origins of political and social institutions and the laws of human progress. The works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu were eagerly studied by the nobles and fine ladies of the court with whom philosophisme was fashionable. America they regarded as a land of freedom and primitive simplicity; and they hailed ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... ablest, emigrated; among them pre-eminent Marshal Schomberg, 'the best general in Europe.' The fleet especially suffered: the best of the sailors emigrated; the ships were almost unmanned. The seamen carried tidings of their country's madness to the ends of the earth: as Voltaire says, 'the French were as widely dispersed as the Jews.' Not only in industry, but in thought and mental activity, there was a terrible loss. From this time literature in France loses ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... impress of the olden time, barring a few aristocratic figures from the Faubourg St.-Germain, who looked as though they had only to don the perukes and the distinctive garb of the eighteenth century to sit down to table with Voltaire and the Marquise du Chatelet. Here and there, indeed, a coiffure, a toilet, the bearing, the gait, or the peculiar grace with which a robe was worn reminded one that this or that fair lady came of a family whose life-story in the days of yore was one of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Mercury, for instance, is alien to the system, and eminently disturbing in its influence. Yet its efficacy in certain forms of specific disease is acknowledged by all but the most sceptical theorists. Even the esprit moqueur of Ricord, the Voltaire of pelvic literature, submits to the time-honored constitutional authority of this great panacea in the class of cases to which he has devoted his brilliant intelligence. Still, there is no telling what evils have arisen from the abuse of this mineral. Dr. Armstrong long ago pointed ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the heroine was seen at last surrounded by real flames! or "Le Vieux de la Montagne" of M. Latour de St. Ybars. With better fortune Rachel appeared in the same author's "Virginie," and in the "Lucrece" of Ponsard. Voltaire's "Oreste" was revived for her in 1845 that she might play Electre. She personated Racine's "Athalie" in 1847, assuming long white locks, painting furrows on her face, and disguising herself beyond recognition, in her determination to seem completely the character she had undertaken. In 1848 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... uncleanness,—is not the function of art! Why not? Homer was the geographer and historian of his time, Moses the legislator of his, Juvenal the judge of his, Dante the theologian of his, Shakespeare the moralist of his, Voltaire the philosopher of his. No region, in speculation or in fact, is shut to the mind. Here a horizon, there wings; freedom for all to soar. To sing the ideal, to love humanity, to believe in progress, to pray toward the infinite. To be the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... which he had lent me. Have I mentioned them? They are a mighty well written defence of the Mosaic law and mission, and as orthodox for Christians as for Jews, with regard to their main tenor, which is to refute the infidel doctrine of Voltaire up to the time of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Voltaire's phrase—is he who can laugh much at these things now. As Goldsmith himself would have agreed, the jests of one age are not the jests of another. But it is a little curious that, by one of those freaks of circumstance, or "fortuitous concourses," there is ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... 15th century the mandrake enjoyed in Italy so great a reputation as an erotic stimulant, that the celebrated Macchiavelli wrote a much admired comedy upon it, called "La Mandragora." The subject of this piece, according to Voltaire, who asserts "qu'il vaut, peut être mieux que toutes les pièces d'Aristophane, est un jeune homme adroit qui veut coucher avec la femme de son voisin. Il engage, avec de l'argent, un moine, un Fa tutto ou un Fa molto, à séduire sa maitresse et à faire tomber ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... armies of her king to victory, and who was burned at Rouen in 1431. She was variously regarded as a harlot and a saint. In Shakspere's historical plays, she is represented in the basest manner, from conventional motives of English patriotism. Voltaire's scandalous work, La Pucelle, and Schiller's noble Jungfrau von Orleans make an instructive contrast. She has been the subject of many dramas and works of poetry and fiction. Her latest prominent admirer is Mark Twain, whose ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the times which were already close at hand. Free-thinker though he was, he was also a powerful member of the aristocracy, and little likely to demean himself—for so he would doubtless hold it—by playing the part of Voltaire or Rousseau. He would help those who could see to see still further, but he would not dazzle eyes that were yet imperfect with a light brighter than they could stand. He would therefore impose upon people, as much as he thought was for their good; but, on the other hand, he would not allow inferior ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... mixed government, and of the three powers, coming down from the age of Cicero, when set by the side of the living British Constitution, are cold, crude, and insufficient to a degree that makes them deceptive. Take them, for example, as represented, fairly enough, by Voltaire: the picture drawn by him is for us ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... [Footnote 8: Voltaire, Histoire de Charles XII. l. iii. When the Austrians desired the aid of the court of Rome against Gustavus Adolphus, they always represented that conqueror as the lineal successor of Alaric. Harte's History of Gustavus, vol. ii. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... preface of your present observations, p. 20. "I can truly say that in the writings of Hume, Mr. Gibbon, Voltaire, Mr. Volney—there is nothing of solid argument: all abound in gross mistakes and misrepresentations." Idem, p. 38—"Whereas had he (Mr. Volney) given attention to the history of the times in which Christianity was promulgated ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... Ferney, the celebrated residence of Voltaire, six miles from Geneva, is a place of very little picturesque beauty: its broad front is turned to the high road, without any regard to the prospect, and the garden is adorned with cut trees, parapet walls with flower-pots, jets d'eaux, &c. Voltaire's bed-room is shown in its pristine ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... Thompson, some miscellanies from the collection of John Evelyn, including his well-known drinking cup; a plaster cast from Thorwaldsen's bust of Byron (only two taken), a picture by Hogarth, miniature of Voltaire ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... next will be given a special performance of 'Irene,' the new work of M. de Voltaire, to be followed by 'Rose and Colas,' an operetta by M. Sedaine and M. de Monsigny, for the benefit of Mademoiselle Colombe, of the Comedie Italienne, who will appear in the second piece. Her Majesty the Queen has graciously promised ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of his "Miscellany," and Pope inscribed to him his translations of the "Iliad." But he treated the muses with ingratitude; for, having long conversed familiarly with the great, he wished to be considered rather as a man of fashion than of wit; and, when he received a visit from Voltaire, disgusted him by the despicable foppery of desiring to be considered not as an author but a gentleman; to which the Frenchman replied, "that, if he had been only a gentleman, he should not ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... approval of the Religion of Jesus Christ. In view of the facts here presented, let these men seriously inquire of themselves, whether in advancing such a claim, they are not uttering a higher and more audacious blasphemy than any which ever fell from the pens of Voltaire and Paine. As if to cover them with confusion, and leave them utterly without excuse for thus libelling the character of a just God, these developments are making, and the veil rising, which for long years of sinful apathy has rested upon the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... p. 118.).—There is no doubt the term martinet is derived from the general officer M. de Martinet indicated by MR. C. FORBES, and who was, as Voltaire states, celebrated for having restored and improved the discipline and tactics of the French army; whence very strict officers came to be called martinets: but is it also from this restorer of discipline that the name of what ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... si un des bras de mon corps estoit infecte de cette farine, je le vouldrois coupper; et si mes enfans en estoient entachez, je les vouldrois immoler." Voltaire (Hist. du parlement de Paris, i. 118), citing the substance of this atrocious sentiment from Maimbourg and Daniel, who themselves take it from Mezeray, says incredulously: "Je ne sais ou ces auteurs ont trouve que Francois premier avait prononce ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... apple we learn from Voltaire, who had it from Newton's favourite niece, who with her husband lived and kept house for him all his later life. It is very like one of those anecdotes which are easily invented and believed in, and very often turn out on scrutiny to have no foundation. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... vicinity to the sea, argue an identity of cause. But still the shells found in the mountains are very imperfectly accounted for. I have lately become acquainted with a memoire on a petrification mixed with shells by a Monsieur de La Sauvagere, giving an exact account of what Voltaire had erroneously stated in his questions Encyclopediques, article Coquilles, from whence I had transferred it into my notes. Having been lately at Tours, I had an opportunity of enquiring into de La Sauvagere's character, and the facts he states. The result ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... equal. His face was of a dirty white, and his wrinkled skull, denuded of hair, bore a vague resemblance to a block of granite. A few gray locks on either side of his head fell straight to the collar of his greasy coat, which was buttoned to the chin. He resembled both Voltaire and Don Quixote; he was, apparently, scoffing but melancholy, full of disdain and philosophy, but half-crazy. He seemed to have no shirt. His beard was long. A rusty black cravat, much worn and ragged, exposed a protuberant neck ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... p. 136 Voltaire, upon what authority we know not, tells us, that during the capitulation the German and Catalonian troops found means to climb over the ramparts into the city, and began to commit the most barbarous excesses. The viceroy complained to Peterborough that his soldiers had taken an unfair ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Voltaire, Jean Jacques, Fenelon, Buffon, and Cochin and Aguesseau were my favorite authors. I knew them ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... poet having consulted him on a tragedy full of extraordinary incidents, Voltaire pointed out to him the defects of his piece. The writer replied, that he had purposely forsaken the beaten track of Corneille and Racine. "So much the worse," replied Voltaire, "originality ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... was a daughter of George I. Frederick loved her, and from her he inherited a taste for music and literature, like many of the family of the Georges. He formed an intimate friendship with Voltaire, the French infidel writer, and interested himself in the French infidelity of the period, which was a reaction against the corrupt ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... following the discovery of the execrated Voltaire, the little Jose, tightly clutching his father's hand, threaded the narrow Sierpes and crossed the Prado de San Sebastian, once the Quemador, where the Holy Inquisition was wont to purge heresy from human souls with fire. The father shuddered, and his stern face grew dark, as he thought of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... keenest of the latter Quinet was. If newspapers were forbidden to be brought into the College: he had a regular supply of the most liberal. If all books but those first submitted to approval were tabu: Quinet was thrice caught reading Voltaire. If criticism of any of the doctrines of Catholic piety was a sin to be expiated hardly even by months of penance: there was nothing sacred to his inquiries, from the authority of the Popes of Avignon to the stigma miracle of the Seraphic St. Francis. He was an enfant terrible; Revolutionist ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... and the kiwi of his wings. They forget that art has never been and cannot be continuously progressive; that it is only the sciences connected with art that are capable of progress; and that the "Henriade" is not a greater poem than the "Divine Comedy" because Voltaire has learned the falsity of the Ptolemaic astronomy. Finally, these writers, like other people, desire to seem knowing and clever; and if you appear to admire vastly what no one else understands you pass for ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... that a good general impression of the stream of history, lighted up with some striking traits of manners and character, may be obtained from it. It would have required the united powers and acquirements of Raleigh, Burke, Gibbon, and Voltaire to fill so vast a canvass with appropriate groups and figures; and she is more open to blame for the ambitious conception of the work than for her comparative failure in the execution. In 1799 she writes to Dr. Gray: "The truth is, my ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... labored to erase out of the mind all respect for religion have acknowledged the importance and expediency of it. Bayle admits religion to be useful if men acted agreeably to its principles; and Voltaire says, expressly, that religion is necessary in every fixed community; the laws are a curb upon open crimes, and religion on those that are private. "No religion," says Bolingbroke, "ever appeared in the world whose natural tendency was so much directed ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... incident. But it is in satire that he reaches his highest level. Love and wine are the frequent burdens of his song, as they are in the Provencal and Italian poetry of his day. Immanuel was something of a Voltaire in his jocose treatment of sacred things, and pietists like Joseph Karo inhibited the study of the Machberoth. Others, too, described his songs as sensuous and his satires as blasphemous. But the devout and earnest piety of some of Immanuel's prayers,—some of them ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... as brilliant in a literary as in a dramatic sense. The play was translated into several languages, not forgetting the Latin, and even Voltaire was pleased, in after years, to come down from his critical throne and honour Mr. Addison's verses with his praise.[A] "The first English writer," he said, "who composed a regular tragedy and infused a spirit of elegance through every part of ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the town lies, that it is a veritable hothouse, and the reverse, we should think, of what an invalid wants. Plombires has always had illustrious visitors—Montaigne, who upon several occasions took the waters here—Maupertuis, Voltaire, Beaumarchais, the Empress Josephine, and a host of historic personages. But the emperor may be called the creator of Plombires. The park, the fine road to Remiremont, the handsome Bain Napoleon (now National), the church, all these ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Descartes, which appeared a few months earlier (in 1674) with less success. Another authority was Father Bouhours, of whom see note on p. 236, vol. i. [Footnote 4 of No. 62.] Another was Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle. called by Voltaire the most universal genius of his age. He was born at Rouen in 1657, looking so delicate that he was baptized in a hurry, and at 16 was unequal to the exertion of a game at billiards, being caused by any unusual ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... mind is complete. But the mind is only a part of man. The heart must be born again. What is the normal state of the unregenerate heart? It is one of either indifference or hatred. The latter is the former fully ripened. It is said that Voltaire carried a seal ring upon which were engraved the words, "Crush the wretch," and every time he sealed a letter he impressed his spirit of hatred upon that letter. Now, the gospel sets forth the love ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... made themselves proprietors, in fee simple. There seems to be no doubt that the traditions of this coutume de mauvais gre (which obviously had much more to do with the politics of Picardy a century ago than either Voltaire or Rousseau) still survive in the Department of the Somme, and every now and then break out in agrarian outrages, rick-burnings, and general incendiarism, whenever leases fall in and landlords try to raise their rents on the shallow pretext ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Sweden. Lewis the XVth, 2 vols. History of the Life and Reign of the Czar Peter the Great. Campaigns of Marshal Turenne. Locke on the Human Understanding. Robertson's History of America, 2 vols. Robertson's History of Charles V. Voltaire's Letters. Life of Gustavus Adolphus. Sully's Memoirs. Goldsmith's Natural History. Mildman on Trees. Vertot's Revolution of Rome, 3 vols. Vertot's Revolution of Portugal, 3 vols. {The Vertot's if ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of the eighteenth century, rather than in coincidence with or in admiration of its works and tendencies. During my residence in Paris, German metaphysics and literature had been my favourite study; I read Kant and Klopstock, Herder and Schiller, much more frequently than Condillac and Voltaire. M. Suard, the Abbe Morellet, the Marquis de Boufflers, the frequenters of the drawing-rooms of Madame d'Houdetot and of Madame de Rumford, who received me with extreme complaisance, smiled, and sometimes grew tired of my Christian traditions and Germanic ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... It would strain the ordinary use of language too much to call such attitudes religious, even though, from the point of view of an unbiased critical philosophy, they might conceivably be perfectly reasonable ways of looking upon life. Voltaire, for example, writes thus to a friend, at the age of seventy-three: "As for myself," he says, "weak as I am, I carry on the war to the last moment, I get a hundred pike-thrusts, I return two hundred, and I laugh. I see near my door Geneva on fire with quarrels over ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Latin) with the title: Si animus cum corpore extinguitur, quid sit Deus? Quid homo? Quid societas? Quid philosophia? (If the soul dies with the body what happens to God? Man? Society? Philosophy?) And an essay in French imagining that he was Voltaire writing to his English friend Cedeville pretending to give his impressions on England. When he had arrived on 30 October 1848 Taine wrote to Cornelis de Witt: "Here I am in the convent and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... not, it will be said, the literary representatives of the spirit of doubt who have demanded and founded toleration? Is it not.... But it is not necessary for my supposed questioner to go on. If he is a Frenchman, he will name Voltaire. No doubt, freedom of opinion has been claimed by sceptics. They have served a good cause; let us know how to rejoice in the fact, and not to be unmindful of what there may have been in their work of noble impulses and generous inspirations. Let us remark however that every proscribed ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... torture of Jean Calas, accused as a Protestant of having hanged his son, who had gone over to the Church of Rome; the ruin of the family; the claustration of the daughters; the flight of the widow to Switzerland; her introduction to Voltaire; the excited zeal of that incomparable partisan and the passionate persistence with which, from year to year, he pursued a reversal of judgment till at last he obtained it and devoted the tribunal of Toulouse to execration and the name of the victims to ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... June 4, 1798. In that lifetime of seventy-three years he travelled, as his Memoirs show us, in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, England, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Poland, Spain, Holland, Turkey; he met Voltaire at Ferney, Rousseau at Montmorency, Fontenelle, d'Alembert and Crebillon at Paris, George III. in London, Louis XV. at Fontainebleau, Catherine the Great at St. Petersburg, Benedict XII. at Rome, Joseph II. at Vienna, Frederick ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... bed: and that on waking, he found it, on more than one occasion, finished in his head. Condorcet, upon leaving his deep and complicated calculations unfinished, after having retired to rest, often found their results unfolded to him in his dreams. Voltaire assures us that he, like La Fontaine, composed verses frequently in his sleep, which he remembered on awaking. Doctor Johnson states that he once in a dream had a contest of wit with some other person, and that he was very much mortified by imagining that his opponent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... gracious, illustrious Prince, with every convenience round you, and such prospects ahead? Well, thank you, at any rate,—and, as the Irish say, more power to your Honor's Glory!" This really is nearly all that said Sets of Letters contain; and except perhaps the Voltaire Set, none of them give symptoms of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... of the Man with the Iron Mask. Out of pure deviltry, it would appear, Voltaire started the story, as mere a fiction as one of his written romances, that the mysterious prisoner was no less than a half-brother of Louis XIV; and Dumas, seeing the dramatic possibilities of the legend, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... companions; the youngest son, Heinrich Floris, possessed, however, in a considerable degree the qualities which his brothers lacked. He possessed intelligence, a strong character, and had great commercial sagacity; at the same time, he took a definite interest in intellectual pursuits, reading Voltaire, of whom he was more or less a disciple, and other French authors, possessing a keen admiration for English political and family life, and furnishing his house after an English fashion. He was a man of fiery temperament and his appearance was scarcely prepossessing; ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... with indignation, though it is impossible not to wonder what would have become of Prussia had not the Prussian king so closely followed in practice the precepts of the Florentine, above all perhaps, as Voltaire observed, in the publication of the Anti-Machiavel itself. No doubt in the eighteenth century, when monarchy was so firmly established as not to need Machiavelli, kings and statesmen sought to clear kingship ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... not merely a grisette, as her enemies attempted to say, and as Voltaire repeated in one of his malicious days. She was the prettiest woman in Paris, spirituelle, elegant, adorned with a thousand gifts and a thousand talents, but with a sort of sentiment which had not the grandeur of an aristocratic ambition. She loved the king for himself, as the finest man ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... have made the enquiry without using the information—a practice not inconsistent in such a biographer. For instance, when he assumes, that in the portrait of Beattie, the figures of Scepticism, Sophistry, and Infidelity, represent Hume, Voltaire, and Gibbon; remarking, that they have survived the "insult of Reynolds." An enquiry from Northcote ought to have led him to conclude otherwise, for Northcote, who had the best means of knowing, says, "Because one of those figures ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... said that this practice prevailed to such a degree, even at the house of the great Lord Chesterfield, that when he invited Voltaire a second time to his table, the French wit in his answer declined the invitation, alleging that "his lordship's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... effort of wit, Voltaire was paid with thirty lashes on his bare back, administered by the king's sergeant-at-arms, and was compelled to sign the following curious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... is included, and a clergyman, who takes the heroine aside and talks sense to her, flavoured with epigram. All these people chatter a mixture of Lord Chesterfield and Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Heine, Voltaire, Madame de Stael, and the late lamented H. J. Byron. "How they do it beats me," as I once overheard at a music hall a stout lady confess to her friend while witnessing the performance of a clever troup, styling themselves "The Boneless ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... hour later he was sitting by his bedside, his chin supported on his hands, and still invoking posterity. "Will you ever know what I went through?" he was saying. "Will you ever realize what my books have cost?" Then he smiled grimly, thinking of Voltaire's cruel epigram—that "letters addressed to posterity seldom reach ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a lineal descent direct from Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau. These men were contemporaries; they came to the same conclusions, expressing the same thought, each in his own way, absolutely independent of the other. And as genius seldom recognizes genius, neither knew the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... for granted that he who has accumulated a large library is necessarily a learned man. It is a very curious fact, but none the less a fact, that just as the greatest men have the shortest biographies, so have they been content with the smallest libraries. Shakespeare, Voltaire, Humboldt, Comte, Goethe had no collection of books to which the term library could fairly be applied. But though each preferred to find in Nature and in Nature's handiworks the mental exercise which less gifted men obtain from books, that did not prevent them ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... the Moscow campaign. But in England, the country which he has made illustrious, the nation he has saved, the land of his birth, he is comparatively forgotten; and were it not for the popular pages of Voltaire, and the shadow which a great name throws over the stream of time in spite of every neglect, he would be virtually unknown at this moment to nineteen-twentieths ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... a fierce succession of blows. With Voltaire and the French revolution present to his mind in all their horror, he had been nourishing in his house a toad of the same spawn! He had been remiss, but would now compel those whom his neglect had injured to pay off his arrears! A most orthodox conclusion! but it did me little harm: it did ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Sonnet exposed herself to terrible tests by fire. A certificate in regard to this matter, signed by eleven persons, of whom one was an English lord, one a Doctor of Theology in the Sorbonne, and another the brother of Voltaire, Armand Arouet, Treasurer of the Chamber of Accounts, is given by Montgeron, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... 1762, Voltaire remonstrated against a jubilee to "thank God for four thousand murders." Yet a century later, in 1862, Monseigneur Desprez, Archbishop of Toulouse, gave notice of the recurrence of the celebration in these words: "The Catholic Church always makes it a duty to recall, in the succession ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Mr. Rushton. "That was an unhappy age—and the philosophy of Voltaire and Rousseau had produced its effect even on ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... prostitute themselves all the year round, and that they are not quite so attractive as the Chaldean beauties. For the rest, one of the incontestable facts of ancient history is this prostitution of the women of Babylon in honor of Venus, and I cannot understand why Voltaire refused to believe it, since religions have always been responsible for the most abominable actions, and because religious wars, the horrors of intolerance, the impostures of priests, the despotism of kings, the degradation and stupidity ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... 3. Voltaire, however, held a different opinion. He thought a powerful effect might be produced by the exhibition of the blind king, indistinctly seen in the back ground, amid the shrieks of Jocasta, and the exclamations ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... full of ballads, which are the ground-work by which we trace the manners and the tenets of the pagan tribes. The truth involved in 'Homer' is the charm of his epic poem, while the falsehood involved in the 'Henriade' of Voltaire is amply sufficient to condemn it utterly. For a specimen let us take Pope's 'Homer,' where Hector answers Andromache's appeal to stay and guard the walls ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... only bring to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is so often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by "all the world" crowds are ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... became King of Prussia himself, free at last to do as he would. He sought out men of genius, musicians, poets, and thinkers. He offered Voltaire, the great Frenchman, a home with him, and his happiest hours were spent in his company, or listening to music, or playing the flute he had loved as a boy. But that was only one side of him, and the side which was least ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... to-day, the definite thing about them is their difference. You cross the channel in fifty minutes from Dover to Calais, you cross the Rhine in five minutes, and the peoples seem thousands of miles apart. "How did it happen," asks Voltaire, "that, setting out from the same point of departure, the governments of England and of France arrived at nearly the same time, at results as dissimilar as the constitution of Venice is unlike that ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... a system of purchase. Voltaire opposed it strongly. They were both right and were indeed agreed on general principles. Montesquieu says: "Venality,—the purchase system,—is a good thing under a monarchical form of government, because work which would ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... Country Churchyard," where it would take a very acid critic to find two bad ones. "Tristram Shandy" would not live. "Hamlet" was gabble. Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" was poor stuff, and he never wrote anything good except "A Tale of a Tub." Voltaire was illiterate. Rousseau was a scoundrel. Deists, like Hume, Priestley, or Gibbon, could not ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... once dispersed by the Guard, carried the matter abroad, and there was no end of sympathetic exaggerations. Report ran in Berlin, for example, that the poor Princess was killed, beaten or trampled to death; which we clearly see she was not. Voltaire, in that mass of angry calumnies, very mendacious indeed, which he calls VIE PRIVEE DU ROI DE PRUSSE, mentions the matter with emphasis; and says farther, The Princess once did him (Voltaire) the "honor ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... of affairs. It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling companion lodged at a wayside inn. The surroundings were suggestive, and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn. "Once there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues." Saying nothing more, he was encouraged ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... benefit of his pupils the sons of an Indian Rajah. The Hindu original has been adapted and translated into a number of languages; Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac, Greek and Latin, Persian and Turkish, under a host of names.[FN237] Voltaire[FN238] wisely remarks of this venerable production:—Quand on fait reflexion que presque toute la terre a ete enfatuee de pareils contes, et qu'ils ont fait l'education du genre humain, on trouve les fables de ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... sum to one who had not wherewithal to buy a morsel of bread; and as I looked at it over and over, I fancied there would be no end to the pleasures such wealth could purchase. I can breakfast on the Quai Voltaire, thought I, ay, and sumptuously too, with coffee, and chestnuts, and a slice of melon, and another of cheese, and a "petite goutte" to finish, for five sous. The panther, at the corner of the Pont Neuf, costs but a sou; and for three one can see ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... agency of the Deity guiding human actions, as a general moves an army; by men of the world, to chance, or the mastering influence of individual energy and talent. Bossuet may be considered as the most eminent of the former class. Voltaire brought the doctrines of the latter to their highest perfection. In opposition to both, Montesquieu strenuously asserted the operation of general laws, emanating doubtless originally from the institutions of the Deity, and the adaptation of the human ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... "Wasn't it Voltaire who quarreled with a king over candle-ends?" Graham queried, pleasuring in the sight of her graceful abandon. Thirty-eight! It was impossible. She seemed almost a girl, petulant and flushed over some school task. Then he ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... we cannot give a sufficient account of the Duke of Marlborough's visit to Charles's head-quarters at Altranstadt; for what Voltaire says on the subject is but an idle fable. That the English general should easily have penetrated the views of the Swedish conqueror, which the latter took no pains to conceal, is sufficiently probable; but that the conversation between two such men should ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... even I, living in his home and seeing him almost every hour of the day, have little chance to talk with him. Last night we met M. Voltaire—dramatist and historian—now in the evening of his days. We were at the Academy, where we had gone to hear an essay by D'Alembert. Franklin and Voltaire—a very thin old gentleman of eighty-four, with piercing black eyes—sat side by side on the platform. The audience demanded that the two ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... a piece of intelligence that you perhaps already know—namely, that the ungodly arch-villain Voltaire has died miserably like a dog—just like a brute. This is his reward! You must long since have remarked that I do not like being here, for many reasons, which, however, do not signify as I am actually here. I never fail to do my very best, and ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... their ancestors, the Gauls, were—vain and light. They are susceptible but of one sentiment—honour. It is right to afford nourishment to this sentiment: and to allow of distinctions. Observe how the people bow before the decorations of foreigners. Voltaire calls the common soldiers Alexanders at five sous a day. He was right: it is just so. Do you imagine that you can make men fight by reasoning? Never. You must bribe them with glory, distinctions, rewards. To come to the point: during ten years ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... miscellaneous writer, s. of a country gentleman of Wiltshire, was ed. at Westminster School, and thereafter made a tour in the East. He was the author of 17 dramatic pieces, some of them, such as his versions of Voltaire's Zaire and Merope, being adaptations. He also wrote a quantity of poetry, which, notwithstanding some good passages, is as a general rule dull and pompous. Having written some satiric lines on Pope he received in ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... nowadays. It conceals either the absence or presence of thought. Bless me! there's an epigram. But I'm afraid it's merely an echo of Voltaire." ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... English. As the character of a language appears to be the result of all the affections of the people who speak it, it did not seem foreign to this design to compare the manner in which two such great genius's as Virgil and Voltaire, have treated the same subject, and to place the loves of Henry and Gabrielle in comparison with those of AEneas and Dido. The elegance, the delicacies, the nicest touches of refined gallantry come admirably forward with the brillant colouring, the light and graceful pencil of Voltaire. The verse ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... within the house. The servants were running hither and thither, there was a confusion of voices, and the rooms were lit up. Three antiquated chambermaids entered the bedroom, and they were shortly afterwards followed by the Countess, who, more dead than alive, sank into a Voltaire armchair. Hermann peeped through a chink. Lizaveta Ivanovna passed close by him, and he heard her hurried steps as she hastened up the little spiral staircase. For a moment his heart was assailed by something like a pricking of conscience, but the emotion ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... to accompany him on an exploration of the Berlin Royal Library, where the librarian, having learned that Clemens had been the Kaiser's guest at dinner, opened the secret treasure chests for the famous visitor. One of these guarded treasures was a volume of grossly indecent verses by Voltaire, addressed to Frederick the Great. "Too much is enough," Mark is reported to have said, when Fisher translated some of the verses, "I would blush to remember any of these stanzas except to tell Krafft-Ebing about them when I get to Vienna." When Fisher had finished copying a verse for him Mark put ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... maintain that human nature has not fallen from the state in which it was created, the instruction of this sublime story will be of no avail. But they who think justly, and feel with strong sensibility, will listen with eagerness and admiration to its truth and wisdom. Voltaire's Candide, written to refute the system of Optimism, which it has accomplished with brilliant success, is wonderfully similar in its plan and conduct to Johnson's Rasselas; insomuch, that I have heard Johnson say[1027], that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... time to think Rousseau, to think Calvin, to think Voltaire, to drive swiftly through the town and back again to the boat, fuming and fretting to be off. There is an old town, gravely picturesque and austerely fine in its fine old burgherly, Calvinistic, exclusive ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... in the waves of schism and heresy. No such dangerous enemy has ever attacked the church as that then issuing from her own bosom. Neither the medieval heretics nor the modern philosophers have won from her in so short a time such masses of adherents. Where Voltaire slew his thousands Luther slew his ten thousands, for Voltaire appealed only to the intellect, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... had no equal. Voltaire says of him with truth that "he never besieged a fortress which he did not take, nor fought a battle which he did not win." This man, at once so able and so false, to whom war was a private speculation rather than a contest ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... national vanity, and tosses about at hap-hazard—self-persuaded that he is proceeding according to art. The Spaniards are a people with imagination: and the paradoxical reveries of Rousseau, and the flippancies of Voltaire, are plants which will not naturalise in the country of Calderon and Cervantes. Though bigotry among the Spaniards leaves much to be lamented; I have proved that the religious habits of the nation must, in a contest of this kind, be ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Why Intellectual Development Human Rights Talmagian Theology (Second Lecture) Talmagian Theology (Third Lecture) Religious Intolerance Hereafter Review of His Reviewers How the Gods Grow The Religion of our Day Heretics And Heresies The Bible Voltaire Myth and Miracle Ingersoll's Letter, on The Chinese God Ingersoll's Letter, Is Suicide a Sin? Ingersoll's Letter, The Right To ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... ancient Bibles—are some of the instances which occur to me. Among more modern publications, 'Walpole's Letters' were familiar to him in boyhood, as well as the 'Letters of Junius' and all the works of Voltaire. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Shachamaxon, quoted by Howitt, forms the subject of one of the pictures of West. Thus ended this famous treaty, of which Voltaire has remarked with so much truth and severity, 'That it was the only one ever concluded which was not ratified by an oath, and the only one that never ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... time in the Temple. A list of his numerous other residences is to be found in Boswell[2]. Congreve died in Surrey-street, in the Strand, at his own house. At the corner of Beaufort-buildings, was Lilly's, the perfumer, at whose house the Tatler was published. In Maiden-lane, Covent-garden, Voltaire lodged while in London, at the sign of the White Peruke. Tavistock-street was then, we believe, the Bond-street of the fashionable world; as Bow-street was before. The change of Bow-street from fashion to the police, with the theatre still in attendance, reminds one of the spirit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... facie, we have no complaint to make that they do differ. And here lies the improvement in the modern type of 'unbeliever.' He does not take the line of his older brethren, and rudely assail Christianity as a mere imposture with Voltaire and Paine. That sort of work has had its day. He, on the other hand, freely admits its beneficent achievements. He has grown reasonable. He accepts Christianity, as the believer does, as a fruitful, beneficent, and conquering fact. He only holds that its existence and its achievements ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... back; it is refreshing to see the pitchfork employed against gentlemen who have doomed such innumerable caravans to hell. In Nietzsche they found, after many long years, a foeman worthy of them—not a mere fancy swordsman like Voltaire, or a mob orator like Tom Paine, or a pedant like the heretics of exegesis, but a gladiator armed with steel and armoured with steel, and showing all the ferocious gusto of a mediaeval bishop. It is a pity that Holy Church has no process for the elevation of demons, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... easily and well that his early desertion of fiction is surprising. His mocking spirit has often suggested comparison with Voltaire, whom he studied and admired. He too is a skeptic and an idol-breaker; but his is a kindlier irony, a less incisive philosophy. Perhaps, however, this influence led to lack of faith in his own work, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... line, at once earning a somewhat toughly-woven livelihood, and perfecting his talent with the pencil. In later years, the force and freedom of this talent were witnessed to by illustrations of a more important character in a magnificent edition of Voltaire's Henriade, published in 1825, and of the well known Life ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... became the foster-mother of many great men. Calvin she took from his own Picardy. Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, the grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, and ancestor of Merle d'Aubigne, the truest friend of Henry IV., Geneva honored as if her own son. Voltaire so loved Geneva that there he had a residence as well as at Ferney, and sang with enthusiasm of blue Lake Leman, "Mon lac est le premier." Madame de Stael was born of Swiss parents in Paris, but her childhood and many of her mature years were spent in charming Coppet, where the waters of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... but of heartfelt need. Marcus Aurelius was a great immolator of white cows. The Christians were disliked, not as superstitious, but as impious. Alexander of Abunoteichos expelled 'Christians and Epicureans' by name from his séances. Lucian is the Voltaire of a credulous age. As for sacerdotal magic, Ovid explicitly ascribed the ex opere operato doctrine ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... quite right. They always like the strong men—the fighters and the workers. In Voltaire's time they all ran after the philosophers. In the middle ages, books tell us, they worshipped the knights errant. They are always on the winning side, the cunning little beauties. In the war-time, when the soldiers had to play the world's game, the ladies all caught the red-coat ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the Greek Voltaire, "Painting is dumb poetry, and poetry is speaking painting," can never have been found in any didactic work; it was an idea, amongst others, of Simonides, and the truth it contains is so evident that we feel compelled to overlook the indistinctness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... read voraciously, and apparently without restraint or control. The letters of Junius and of Horace Walpole were familiar to him "in boyhood," we are assured with provoking indefiniteness by Mrs Orr; as well as "all the works of Voltaire." Most to his mind, however, was the rich sinewy English and athletic fancy of the seventeenth-century Fantastic Quarles; a preference which foreshadowed his later delight in the great master of the Fantastic school, and of all who care for close-knit intellect ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... are the shameless and selfish infidels and deists, Voltaire, Rosseau, Robespierre and others like them. Paris admires her deistical authors and makes them the objects of hero-worship. They are called "Philosophs," and Bible readers must not stand in their way. Philosophism sits joyful in glittering saloons, is the pride of nobles ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... for the facts accumulated on this subject, are Dr. Blumenbach, of Goettingen, Dr. Pritchard, of Edinburgh, and the eminent surgeon, Mr. Lawrence. It has been a favourite matter of speculation with Lord Monboddo, as well as with Voltaire, Rousseau, and the philosophers of the French school, who have endeavoured to show that men and other animals are endowed with reason or instinct of the same kind, but of different degrees. According to these fanciful writers, the monkey ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... believe Voltaire, the Spaniards were formerly very generous in their gaming. 'The grandees of Spain,' he says, 'had a generous ostentation; this was to divide the money won at play among all the bystanders, of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz |
