All Possible Worlds Candide Quotes & Sayings

Candide, terrified, amazed, desperate, all bloody, all palpitating, said to himself: If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? Well, — Voltaire

Your understanding of a place changes the longer you stay; you discover more, and your own life gets woven into the fabric of the community. — Kim Edwards

The weakest being on earth can accomplish feats of strength. The frailest urchin will ring every doorbell on the street in arctic weather or hoist himself aloft to inscribe his name on a virgin monument. — Honore De Balzac

All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; after all, if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunegonde, if you hadn't been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn't traveled across America on foot, if you hadn't given a good sword thrust to the baron, if you hadn't lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn't be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios. - That is very well put, said Candide, but we must cultivate our garden. — Voltaire

It is the truth which is assailed in any age which tests our fidelity. It is to confess we are called, not merely to profess. If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point. — Elizabeth Rundle Charles

The general air of insecurity and affection made it too easy for him to imagine these once-a-year fabulous creatures as the cubicle dwellers most of them were in everyday life. — Charlie Huston

When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen. — Stella Adler

Give more than you receive. That is the principle I tell all my students. — B.K.S. Iyengar

You had to account for every move, arrival or exit. In the world there was a conspiracy against improvisation. It was only permitted in jazz. — Anais Nin

Hyper-selectionism has been with us for a long time in various guises; for it represents the late nineteenth century's scientific version of the myth of natural harmony all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds (all structures well designed for a definite purpose in this case). It is, indeed, the vision of foolish Dr. Pangloss, so vividly satirized by Voltaire in Candide the world is not necessarily good, but it is the best we could possibly have. — Stephen Jay Gould