Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 544

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Candide and Other Stories," by Voltaire.

(Candide)

"So Pangloss deceived me cruelly when he told me that all was well with the world."

(Candide)

"You see," Candide said to Martin, "Crime is sometimes punished. That scoundrel of a Dutch skipper got the fate he deserved."

"Yes," said Martin," but did the passengers on his ship have to perish also? God punished the rogue: the devil drowned the rest."

(Candide)

"Do you think," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other the way they do now? That they've always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands? That they've always been feeble, fickle, envious, gluttonous, drunken, avaricious, ambitious, bloodthirsty, slanderous, debauched, fanatical, hypocritical, and stupid?"

"Do you think," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they find them"

"Yes, no doubt," said Candide. 

"Well, then," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same character, why do you expect men to have changed theirs?"

(The Ingenu)

He read some histories: they depressed him. The world seemed too full of villainy and human misery. For indeed history is but a tableau of every crime and catastrophe. On such a large stage the vast majority of innocent, peaceable human beings continually fade into the background. The leading characters are invariably depraved men of ambition. It is as if history only succeeds if it is like tragedy, which palls if it is not enlivened by passion and foul deeds and great disasters

(The Ingenu)

The Ingenu was making rapid progress in his studies, particularly in the study of man. The reason for this rapid intellectual progress lay as much in his education as a savage as in the natural cast of his personality. For, having learnt nothing all in his childhood, he had not acquired any prejudices. His thinking, not having been warped by error, remained as straight as ever. He saw things as they are, whereas the ideas with which we are imbued during childhood make us see things our whole lives through as they are not.