Voltaire: A Sketch of His Life and Works
1894
Voltaire: A Sketch of His Life and Works
1894
Voltaire lived to offend, and this 1894 biographical sketch captures exactly why that mattered. J. M. Wheeler traces the arc of a man born François Marie Arouet in Paris who chose a weapon sharper than any blade: wit. From his earliest clashes with a father who wanted a respectable lawyer, through years of exile and imprisonment for his satirical barbs at the powerful, Wheeler paints Voltaire as a figure who refused to let comfort purchase his silence. The book traces his battles with religious hypocrisy, royal tyranny, and the stupid cruelties of his age, showing how a talent for mockery became a form of moral resistance. Selected excerpts from Voltaire's own writings punctuate the narrative, letting his voice crackle across the century. What emerges is not just a portrait of a philosopher, but a field guide to the art of intellectual disobedience. Wheeler wrote for readers who suspected that reason and tolerance were radical ideas worth fighting for, and his sketch still serves anyone curious about where modern skepticism found its spine.
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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?””
— J. M. Wheeler
“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.””
— J. M. Wheeler
“You're a bitter man," said Candide.That's because I've lived," said Martin.””
— J. M. Wheeler
“Let us cultivate our garden.””
— J. M. Wheeler
“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.””
— J. M. Wheeler
“But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.””
— J. M. Wheeler
“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?””
— J. M. Wheeler
“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.””
— J. M. Wheeler
“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.””
— J. M. Wheeler
