a beautiful, simple masterpiece: Candide by Voltaire (1759)
"Men... must have corrupted nature a little, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves. God did not give them twenty-four-pounder cannons or bayonets, and they have made bayonets and cannons to destroy each other."
"If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?"
"A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but I still loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most disastrous inclinations. For is there anything more stupid than to want to bear continually a burden that we always want to throw to the ground? To regard our being with horror, and to cling to our being? In fine, to caress the serpent that devours us until it has eaten our hearts."
"I confess that when I consider this globe, or rather this globule, I think that God has abandoned it to some evil creature"
"Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need."
"Man was born to live in the convulsions of anxiety or the lethargy of boredom."
"Do you think... that men have always massacred each other, as they do today? Have they always been liars, cheats, traitors, brigands, weak, flighty, cowardly, envious, gluttonous, drunken, grasping, and vicious, bloody, backbiting, debauched, fanatical, hypocritical, and silly?"
"Men... must have corrupted nature a little, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves. God did not give them twenty-four-pounder cannons or bayonets, and they have made bayonets and cannons to destroy each other."
"If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?"
"A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but I still loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most disastrous inclinations. For is there anything more stupid than to want to bear continually a burden that we always want to throw to the ground? To regard our being with horror, and to cling to our being? In fine, to caress the serpent that devours us until it has eaten our hearts."
"I confess that when I consider this globe, or rather this globule, I think that God has abandoned it to some evil creature"
"Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need."
"Man was born to live in the convulsions of anxiety or the lethargy of boredom."
"Do you think... that men have always massacred each other, as they do today? Have they always been liars, cheats, traitors, brigands, weak, flighty, cowardly, envious, gluttonous, drunken, grasping, and vicious, bloody, backbiting, debauched, fanatical, hypocritical, and silly?"
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