Quotes from Candide

Quotations follow the Theo Cuffe translation (Penguin Classics, 2005) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   In this best of all possible worlds, all is for the best.

2. 3

   All that is very well, but let us cultivate our garden.

3. 4

   It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for all being created for an end, all is necessarily for the best end.

4. 5

   Observe, that the nose has been formed to bear spectacles--thus we have spectacles. Legs are visibly designed for stockings--and we have stockings.

5. 6

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

6. 7

   Pangloss was professor of metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology.

7. 8

   Alas! it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.

8. 9

   They who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said all is for the best.

9. 10

   I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life.

10. 11

    A hundred times I was upon the point of killing myself; but still I loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics.

11. 12

    There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde... you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.

12. 13

    The burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible secret to hinder the earth from quaking.

13. 14

    Let us work without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable.

14. 15

    What signifies it whether there be evil or good? When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?

15. 16

    I and my children cultivate them; our labour preserves us from three great evils--weariness, vice, and want.

16. 17

    When man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle.

17. 18

    Had our friend Pangloss seen El Dorado he would no longer have said that the castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh was the finest upon earth. It is evident that one must travel.

18. 19

    Fools admire everything in an author of reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself.

19. 20

    His countenance was a true picture of his soul. He combined a true judgment with simplicity of spirit, which was the reason, I apprehend, of his being called Candide.

20. 21

    Whatever Master Pangloss might say, I often found that things went very ill in Westphalia.