Candide
Candide begins in a castle of fool's paradise and ends in a garden. Between them lies one of the most devastating satires ever written. Young Candide is raised to believe, against all evidence, that he lives in the best of all possible worlds. His tutor Pangloss insists that everything happens for the best, even when Candide is expelled from paradise, enslaved, whipped, and forced to witness the Lisbon earthquake that kills thirty thousand souls. The picaresque plot hurtles through wars, colonies, and absurd encounters, each new catastrophe further shredding the philosophy that all is for the best. Voltaire dismantles Leibnizian optimism with savage precision, but his ending offers something harder than cynicism: a quiet, practical wisdom. We cannot control the world's horrors, but we can tend our own small plot. This is the book that got Voltaire banned across Europe, and it remains尖锐 enough to make comfortable optimists very uncomfortable.
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“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
“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.””
— Voltaire
“You're a bitter man," said Candide.That's because I've lived," said Martin.””
— Voltaire
“Let us cultivate our garden.””
— Voltaire
“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.””
— Voltaire
“But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.””
— Voltaire
“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?””
— Voltaire
“I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?'That is a hard question,' said Candide.””
— Voltaire
“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.””
— Voltaire
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Voltaire. Candide. Lex, lex-books.com/book/candide-80aee8e1-1218-4e2b-a918-2c8c5d93fe6e.Voltaire (n.d.). Candide. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/candide-80aee8e1-1218-4e2b-a918-2c8c5d93fe6eVoltaire. Candide. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/candide-80aee8e1-1218-4e2b-a918-2c8c5d93fe6e.
