"The Portable Voltaire"

[fiefoe]

Once in a while, it's nice to read something that requires no emotional involvement. It's also rare that one is able to deploy the tunneling method -- in this case, I'm working my way through "Candide" forward and "Philosophical Dictionary" backward.

A tiny sampler:

• An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction is always to have something to do. Creech, the commentator on Lucretius, marked upon his manuscripts: “N. B. Must hang myself when I have finished.” He kept his word with himself that he might have the pleasure of ending like his author. If he had undertaken a commentary upon Ovid he would have lived longer.
• Homer never produces tears. The true poet, according to my idea, is he who touches the soul and softens it, others are only fine speakers. I am far from proposing this opinion as a rule. “I give my opinion,” says Montaigne, “not as being good, but as being my own.”
• It is very likely that the more ancient fables, in the style of those attributed to Aesop, were invented by the first subjugated people. Free men would not have had occasion to disguise the truth.
  

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Latin Quarters:

Una hirundo non facit ver    ("One swallow doesn't make spring")   
Commodum habitus es     ("You have just been owned")