Voltaire
French essayist, critic, playwright, and historian
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
There is no complete language, no language which can express all our ideas and all our sensations; their shades are too numerous, too imperceptible. Nobody can make known the precise degree of sensation he experiences. One is obliged, for example, to designate by the general names of love and hate a thousand loves and a thousand hates all different from each other; it is the same with our pleasures and our pains. Thus all languages are, like us, imperfect.
—Voltaire, French essayist, critic, playwright, and historian, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764
Posted on March 30, 2000 at 9:44 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when the man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics.
—Voltaire, French playwright, essayist, and literary critic, Candide, 1759
Posted on April 2, 1998 at 10:12 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
—Voltaire, French essayist, critic, playwright, and historian, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764
Posted on April 3, 2002 at 1:45 PM
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