Sourced and curated.

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

Candide · 1759

★ 7.4

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?

Candide · 1759

★ 7.0

Great wits are sure to madness near allied And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

John Dryden

Absalom and Achitophel · 1681

★ 6.9

For who can be secure of private right, If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might? Nor is the people's judgement always true: The most may err as grossly as the few.

John Dryden

Absalom and Achitophel · 1681

★ 6.9

Novel · Satirical fiction · Satire

Speak the truth and shame the Devil.

Francois Rabelais

Gargantua and Pantagruel · 1564

★ 5.5

Men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent as when they are at stool.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 5.5

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting · 1745

★ 5.5

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 5.4

What is Love?... It is the morning and the evening star.

Sinclair Lewis

1927

★ 5.4

Satire · Political literature

They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.

Thomas More

Utopia · 1516

★ 5.3

Play · Satire

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

George Bernard Shaw

Plays Unpleasant · 1898

★ 5.3

Novel · Satirical fiction · Satire

To laugh is proper to man.

Francois Rabelais

Gargantua and Pantagruel · 1534

★ 4.7

Satire · Political literature

They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.

Thomas More

Utopia · 1516

★ 4.5

I said there was a society of men among us bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose that white is black and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 4.5

We must cultivate our garden.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.9

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

Candide · 1759

★ 3.9

All wish to be learned, but no one is willing to pay the price.

Juvenal

Satires · 100

★ 3.8

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

1727

★ 3.8

Satire

1738

★ 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.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.8

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

1711

★ 3.7

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

1711

★ 3.7

They will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or his mother for bringing him into the world - which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts in their love encounters were otherwise employed.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 3.7

Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.

Gulliver's Travels · 1726

★ 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?

Candide · 1759

★ 3.7

Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege.

True happinesse Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth, and choice.

Candide · 1759

★ 3.7

Play · Satire

Ben Jonson

Cynthia's Revels, or The Fountain of Self-Love · 1600

★ 3.6

Nor is the people's judgment always true: The most may err as grossly as the few.

John Dryden

Absalom and Achitophel · 1681

★ 3.6

Play · Satire (play) · Satire

Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Critic · 1779

★ 3.6

I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life! I don't know 's I've accomplished anything except just get along.

Sinclair Lewis

Babbitt · 1922

★ 3.6

Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation.

Daniel Defoe

1701

★ 3.5

Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Oliver Goldsmith

The Citizen of the World · 1761

★ 3.5

Play · Satire (play) · Satire

The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The Critic · 1779

★ 3.5

Novel · Horror · Satire

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

Chuck Palahniuk

2003

★ 3.5

Play · Drama (play) · Satire

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

George Bernard Shaw

1898

★ 3.5

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

Stephen Leacock

1924

★ 3.5

Film · Drama (film) · Satire (film) · Drama · Satire

Everyone has their reasons.

Octave

The Rules of the Game · 1939

★ 2.8