Candide quotes

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

— Candide · XXX. THE CONCLUSION

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

— Spoken by a character · VI

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

— Spoken by a character · I

"Alas!" said Candide, "it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong."

— Candide · XIX

This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe.

— Spoken by a character · XIX

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

— Martin · XXX. THE CONCLUSION

"I have only twenty acres," replied the old man; "I and my children cultivate them; our labour preserves us from three great evils--weariness, vice, and want."

— Spoken by a character · XXX. THE CONCLUSION

"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: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts."

— Spoken by a character · XXX. THE CONCLUSION

"But for what end, then, has this world been formed?" said Candide.

"To plague us to death," answered Martin.

— Candide · XXI

"Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?"

— Candide · XXI

"There can be no effect without a cause," modestly answered Candide; "the whole is necessarily concatenated and arranged for the best. It was necessary for me to have been banished from the presence of Miss Cunegonde, to have afterwards run the gauntlet, and now it is necessary I should beg my bread until I learn to earn it; all this cannot be otherwise."

— Candide · III

"I want to know which is worse, to be ravished a hundred times by negro pirates, to have a buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fe, to be dissected, to row in the galleys--in short, to go through all the miseries we have undergone, or to stay here and have nothing to do?"

— Spoken by a character · XXX. THE CONCLUSION

"What signifies it," said the Dervish, "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?"

— the Dervish · XXX. THE CONCLUSION

"Hold your tongue," answered the Dervish.

— the Dervish · XXX. THE CONCLUSION

In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the most gentle manners. 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.

"There is no doubt of it; but in this country it is found good, from time to time, to kill one Admiral to encourage the others."

— Spoken by a character · XXIII

Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less wretched than I.

— Spoken by a character · XIX