Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He read the letter asked me if I wrote it and not believing me, told me to come into his tent, sit down at his table, and write at his dictation. I did so, and I have written every line to which his name is signed since, except his love letters. Writing is, in itself, no great accomplishment. Monsieur Voltaire himself has said that a man may have a great deal of esprit and yet write like a cat.
The eulogy of Locke in Voltaire's "Lettres Philosophiques" gave especial offense to the French churchmen. Voltaire writes to a friend that the censor might have been brought to give his approbation to all the letters but this one.
The value of the reactionary movement lay in pressing these facts and aspects on the attention, in reopening chambers of the human spirit which the age of Voltaire had locked and sealed. The idea of Progress was particularly concerned in the general change of attitude, intellectual and emotional, towards the Middle Ages.
The king, to whom Voltaire had shown his manuscript, felt this; and although he had listened to the "Akakia" with the most lively pleasure, and often interrupted the reading by loud laughter and applause, he asked Voltaire to destroy the manuscript.
Victor Hugo imagined when he wrote it that he was inspired by Shakespeare; if he was inspired by anyone it was by Voltaire. His drama is the old drama of the eighteenth century, repainted in picturesque colours; it resembles those grotesque country-houses that our forefathers were so fond of, where the sham-Gothic turrets and castellations ill conceal the stucco and the pilasters of a former age.
There she had recently recited the "Marseillaise" to frenzied Paris; and there, in the vestibule, genius of French comedy, of French intellect, and of French life, sits the wonderful Voltaire of Houdon, the statue which, for the first time, after the dreadful portraits which misrepresent him, gives the spectator some adequate idea of the personal appearance and impression of the man who moulded an age.
Besides admirable translations of all the works of antiquity, there are innumerable masterpieces, like those of Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Goethe, which were unheard of four centuries ago. Consequently we can now acquaint ourselves with a great part of the best that has been written in all ages without knowing either Latin or Greek. The Middle Ages enjoyed no such advantage.
"The finest wits of the Canton All collected in your name, People all who could not but be pleased with you, All devout believers in Voltaire, Unanimously took you For the god of their Paradise. "'Paradise, that you may not be scandalized, is taken here in a general sense for a place of pleasure and joy.
Besides the Abbe de Bouffiers, by whom I was not beloved, and Madam de Bouffiers, in whose opinion I was guilty of that which neither women nor authors ever pardon, the other friends of Madam de Luxembourg never seemed much disposed to become mine, particularly the President Henault, who, enrolled amongst authors, was not exempt from their weaknesses; also Madam du Deffand, and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, both intimate with Voltaire and the friends of D'Alembert, with whom the latter at length lived, however upon an honorable footing, for it cannot be understood I mean otherwise.
Voltaire was ever the child of good fortune, and his life and adventures have been extraordinary, while I was near sharing the common fate of younger sons. I was destined for the priesthood." "That's a droll idea, indeed!" said Frederick. "D'Argens, who believes in nothing, intended for a priest! How did you escape this danger?"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking