Candide (Paperback)

"Thus the end of 'Candide' is for me patent proof of a genius of the first water. The claws of the lion are marked on that quiet conclusion, as stupid as life itself." - Gustave Flaubert 04/24/1852

"He experienced the clarities of dawn. He illuminated the true, the just, the good, and what there is of honesty in the useful. He lit up the interior of superstitions; these ugly sights are good for us to see....to attack the ferocious magistrates and the bloody-minded priests, to take a whip and drive the moneychangers from the temple, to reclaim the heritage of orphans, to protect the weak, the suffering, and the humiliated, to struggle in behalf of the persecuted and the oppressed: that is the war of Jesus Christ. And who is the man who fought that war? It is Voltaire." - Victor Hugo 05/30/1878

"...Voltaire is like us. The average spirit of France is in him....Voltaire is light, impulsive, a fighter; he is a Frenchman." - Emile Faguet

"As for novels, Voltaire wrote just one, which is a summary of all his works...His whole intelligence was an implement of war, a weapon. And what makes me cherish him is the disgust I feel for his followers, the Voltaireans, those people who laugh at great things. Did he laugh, himself? He ground his teeth." - Gustave Flaubert c. 1859

"Other cynics astonished the virtuous, Voltaire amazed the vicious. He plunges into filth, roll in it, saturates himself; he yields his imagination to the enthusiasm of hell, which lends all its forces to drag him to the absolute limits of evil. He invents monsters, prodigies which cause one to blench. Paris crowned him, Sodom would have banished him." - Joseph de Maistre

"Other cynics astonished the virtuous, Voltaire amazed the vicious. He plunges into filth, roll in it, saturates himself; he yields his imagination to the enthusiasm of hell, which lends all its forces to drag him to the absolute limits of evil. He invents monsters, prodigies which cause one to blench. Paris crowned him, Sodom would have banished him." - Joseph de Maistre

"As for novels, Voltaire wrote just one, which is a summary of all his works...His whole intelligence was an implement of war, a weapon. And what makes me cherish him is the disgust I feel for his followers, the Voltaireans, those people who laugh at great things. Did he laugh, himself? He ground his teeth." - Gustave Flaubert c. 1859

"...Voltaire is like us. The average spirit of France is in him....Voltaire is light, impulsive, a fighter; he is a Frenchman." - Emile Faguet

"He experienced the clarities of dawn. He illuminated the true, the just, the good, and what there is of honesty in the useful. He lit up the interior of superstitions; these ugly sights are good for us to see....to attack the ferocious magistrates and the bloody-minded priests, to take a whip and drive the moneychangers from the temple, to reclaim the heritage of orphans, to protect the weak, the suffering, and the humiliated, to struggle in behalf of the persecuted and the oppressed: that is the war of Jesus Christ. And who is the man who fought that war? It is Voltaire." - Victor Hugo 05/30/1878

"Comedy turns sad as soon as it becomes human. Does not 'Don Quixote' sometimes make you grieve? I greatly admire those works of a serene and smiling desolation, like the incomparable 'Don Quixote' or like 'Candide', which are, when properly taken, manuals of indulgence and pity, bibles of benevolence." - Anatole France

"Thus the end of 'Candide' is for me patent proof of a genius of the first water. The claws of the lion are marked on that quiet conclusion, as stupid as life itself." - Gustave Flaubert 04/24/1852

"Other cynics astonished the virtuous, Voltaire amazed the vicious. He plunges into filth, roll in it, saturates himself; he yields his imagination to the enthusiasm of hell, which lends all its forces to drag him to the absolute limits of evil. He invents monsters, prodigies which cause one to blench. Paris crowned him, Sodom would have banished him." - Joseph de Maistre

"As for novels, Voltaire wrote just one, which is a summary of all his works...His whole intelligence was an implement of war, a weapon. And what makes me cherish him is the disgust I feel for his followers, the Voltaireans, those people who laugh at great things. Did he laugh, himself? He ground his teeth." - Gustave Flaubert c. 1859

"...Voltaire is like us. The average spirit of France is in him....Voltaire is light, impulsive, a fighter; he is a Frenchman." - Emile Faguet

"He experienced the clarities of dawn. He illuminated the true, the just, the good, and what there is of honesty in the useful. He lit up the interior of superstitions; these ugly sights are good for us to see....to attack the ferocious magistrates and the bloody-minded priests, to take a whip and drive the moneychangers from the temple, to reclaim the heritage of orphans, to protect the weak, the suffering, and the humiliated, to struggle in behalf of the persecuted and the oppressed: that is the war of Jesus Christ. And who is the man who fought that war? It is Voltaire." - Victor Hugo 05/30/1878

"When we observe such things as the recrudescence of Fundamentalism in the United States, the horrors of religious fanaticism in the Middle East, the appaling danger which the stubbornness of political intolerance presents to the whole world, we must surely conclude that we can still profit by the example of the lucidity, the acumen, the intellectual honesty and the moral courage of Voltaire." - A.J. Ayer