1759

Showing 26 works across all media from 1759

Fiction · Picaresque

Candide

Voltaire

1759 · 336 pages

Voltaire sends an innocent young man taught that this is the best of all possible worlds through war, earthquake, and the Inquisition. The comedy is savage and the optimism does not survive.

★ 8.2

Novel · Satire

All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 7.6

Novel · Satire

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

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 7.4

Fiction · Picaresque

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

1759 · 735 pages

Samuel Johnson pronounced this book already dead. Two hundred and sixty years on, Tristram is still failing to get himself born, derailed by his father's theories and his uncle's toy fortress.

★ 7.3

Economic literature · Philosophical literature

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.

Adam Smith

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 7.1

Novel · Satire

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?

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 7.0

Nonfiction · Moral philosophy

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Adam Smith

1759 · 494 pages

Smith argues that conscience is imagined company: we judge ourselves by picturing an impartial spectator and wanting his approval. The economist famous for self-interest built his moral system on fellow feeling.

★ 6.8

Play

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science.

Charles Macklin

Love a la Mode · 1759

★ 5.3

Philosophical literature

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

Adam Smith

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 3.9

Novel · Satire

We must cultivate our garden.

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 3.9

Novel · Satire

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

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 3.9

Philosophical literature

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

Adam Smith

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 3.8

Novel · Satire

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

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 3.8

Philosophical literature

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.

Adam Smith

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 3.7

Philosophical literature

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.

Adam Smith

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 3.7

Novel

Example is always more efficacious than precept.

Samuel Johnson

The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale · 1759

★ 3.7

Novel · Satire

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.

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 3.7

Novel · Satire

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?

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 3.7

Novel · Satire

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.

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 3.7

Novel · Satire

Let us work without reasoning, it is the only way to make life endurable.

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 2.2