Great men have all been formed either before acade — Voltaire

Who has not the spirit of his age, Of his age has all the unhappiness. 12 Letter to Madame du Châtelet We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one. When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion. It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue. ‘The Leningrad Notebooks’ (c .1735–50) in T. Besterman (ed.) Voltaire’s Notebook (2nd ed., 1968) vol. 2, p. 455

When a man tells you he got rich by hard work, ask him whose. George Bernard Shaw It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. Mark Twain Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it. Albert Camus Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is. Albert Camus