Voltaire Quotes on Love
Voltaire wrote about love with the wit and worldly frankness that mark all his work, and the quotes gathered here display it. He judged love the most powerful of the passions, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the body, and he ascribed it a near-universal dominion in his playful inscription for a statue of Love, which names it the master of all who behold it. Voltaire also gave love its due weight against mortality itself, declaring that one dies twice, and that to cease to love and to be loved is an insupportable death. Characteristically, he set love within a sensible economy of a whole life, advising one to make love in youth and in old age turn to other concerns. Drawn from his verse, letters, and notebooks, these passages treat love as the strongest of human feelings, observed with affection and irony.
Quotes
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“Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the body. Le Dernier Volume Des Œuvres De Voltaire: Contes — Comédie — Pensées -— Poésies — Lettres (1862)”
L'amour est de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu'elle attaque à la fois la tête, le cœur et le corps. -
“Written by Voltaire in an over-long letter to a friend, quoted to A. P. Martinich in Philosophical Writing: An Introduction , Note to the Second Edition (1996)”
If I had had more time, this letter would have been shorter. -
“I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.”
1770s | Déclaration de Voltaire, note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière (28 February 1778) -
“Pleasure has its time; so, too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age, attend to thy salvation.”
A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 50 -
“One dies twice: to cease to live is nothing, but to cease to love and to be loved is an insupportable death.”
A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 113 -
“Voltaire inscribed on a statue of Love: "Whoever thou art, behold thy master! He rules thee, or has ruled thee, or will rule thee!"”
A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 159 -
“While loving glory so much how can you persist in a plan which will cause you to lose it?”
1750s | Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington , letter 130 from Voltaire to Frederick II of Prussia, October 1757 [7]