'Candide' Quotes

Voltaire offers his satirical view of society and nobility in Candide. The novel was published in 1759, and it is often considered the author's most important work--representative of The Enlightenment. Here are a few quotes from Candide.

• "All I presume is that there are millions of men on earth a hundred times more to be pitied than King Charles Edward, the Emperor Ivan, and the Sultan Achmet."
  - Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 27
  
  
• "when you were hanged, dissected, stunned with blows and made to row in the galleys, did you always think that everything was for the best in this world?"
  - Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 28
  
  
• "Candide, that tender lover, seeing his fair Cunégonde sunburned, blear-eyed, flat-breasted, with wrinkles around her eyes and red, chapped arms, recoiled three paces in horror, and then advanced from mere politeness."
  - Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 29
  
  
• "I should like to know which is worse, to be raped a hundred times by Negro pirates, to have a buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and flogged in an auto-da-fé, to be dissected, to row in a galley, in short, to endure all the miseries through which we have passed, or to remain here doing nothing?"
  - Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 30
  
  
• "When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he worry about the comfort or discomfort of the rats in the ship?"
  - Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 30
  
  
• "Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need."
  - Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 30
  
  
• "Let us work without theorizing... 'tis the only way to make life endurable."
  - Voltaire, Candide, Chapter 30