1750s

Haste makes Waste.

1753

★ 7.5

If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?

Candide · 1759

★ 7.4

Little strokes fell great Oaks.

Economic literature · Philosophical literature

1750

★ 7.4

Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 7.1

Essay · Political literature

1755

★ 7.1

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said, "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.

Candide · 1759

★ 7.0

Political literature

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Discourse on Inequality · 1755

★ 6.1

Genius without Education is like Silver in the Mine.

1750

★ 5.5

Love your Neighbor; yet don't pull down your Hedge.

1754

★ 5.5

Old Boys have their Playthings as well as young Ones; the Difference is only in the Price.

I can with truth assure you, I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.

1752

★ 5.5

Letter

George Washington

1754

★ 5.5

Such is the delight of mental superiority , that none on, whom nature or study have conferred it, would purchase the gifts of fortune by its loss.

Samuel Johnson

1751

★ 5.3

We have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

Edmund Burke

Philosophical Enquiry in the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful · 1757

★ 5.3

Play

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science.

Charles Macklin

Love a la Mode · 1759

★ 5.3

Glass, China, and Reputation, are easily crack’d, and never well mended.

1750

★ 4.7

Great Estates may venture more; Little Boats must keep near Shore.

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.

1751

★ 4.7

Political literature

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Discourse on Political Economy · 1755

★ 4.5

Poem

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Thomas Gray

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard · 1751

★ 4.5

Anger is never without a Reason, but seldom with a good One.

1753

★ 3.9

The Horse thinks one thing, and he that saddles him another.

1754

★ 3.9

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 3.9

We must cultivate our garden.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.9

Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.9

Hide not your Talents, they for Use were made: “What’s a Sun-Dial in the Shade?”

God is on the side not of the heavy battalions, but of the best shots.

1750

★ 3.8

Personal journal

1750

★ 3.8

‘Tis easier to suppress the first Desire, than to satisfy all that follow it.

1751

★ 3.8

For want of Nail the Shoe is lost; For want of a Shoe the Horse is lost; For want of a Horse the Rider is lost.

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.

1752

★ 3.8

Letter

George Washington

Letters of George Washington · 1757

★ 3.8

Essay

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.

David Hume

1758

★ 3.8

Essay

A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty.

David Hume

1758

★ 3.8

Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 3.8

She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.8

Personal journal

1750

★ 3.7

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Edmund Burke

Philosophical Enquiry in the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful · 1757

★ 3.7

We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 3.7

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

Example is always more efficacious than precept.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 3.7

Novel

Samuel Johnson

The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale · 1759

★ 3.7

All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; for, after all, if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunégonde, if you hadn’t been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn’t traveled across America on foot, if you hadn’t given a good sword thrust to the baron, if you hadn’t lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn’t be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.7

Do you believe that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?