Voltaire
1) Candide
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"If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?" - CANDIDE
Candide is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. It is the absurdly melodramatic story of a young man, Candide, living a sheltered life who clings desperately to "the best of all possible worlds," one which is abruptly interrupted by a series of painfully disillusioning events that set him off on a wide-ranging journey....
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Caustic and hilarious, Candide has ranked as one of the world's great satires since its first publication in 1759. It concerns the adventures of the youthful Candide, disciple of Dr. Pangloss, who was himself a disciple of Leibniz. In the course of his travels and adventures in Europe and South America, Candide saw and suffered such misfortune that it was difficult for him to believe this was "the best of all possible worlds" as Dr. Pangloss had assured...
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Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary is a series of short essays, hortatory and propagandist, over an enormously wide range of subjects. It was deliberately planned as a revolutionary book and was duly denounced on all sides and described as 'a deplorable monument of the extent to which intelligence and erudition can be abused'. The subjects treated include Abraham, Angel and Anthropophages; Baptism, Beauty and Beasts; Fables, Fraud and Fanaticism;...
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Zadig; or, The Book of Fate (French: Zadig ou la Destinée; 1747) is a novella and work of philosophical fiction by the Enlightenment writer Voltaire. It tells the story of Zadig, a philosopher in ancient Babylonia. The author does not attempt any historical accuracy, and some of the problems Zadig faces are thinly disguised references to social and political problems of Voltaire's own day.
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After his return to France, Voltaire set out to write "Lettres Philosophiques," or "Letters on England," in which he challenged the old regime of France with brief, epigrammatic essays on the political liberty, religious tolerance and commercial enterprise of the British. The work – which was soon condemned by the French censor and all copies ordered to be seized – praises the English political and trade systems, the peaceful interaction between...