"Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst."
Candide is the story of a man who, despite being pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds."
Oh how I love this book! It's short, fast paced and very witty.
One of the central themes in this book is the inadequacy of optimistic thinking. This comes out through various characters that stand their ground in maintaining that "this is the best of all possible worlds", despite the numerous sufferings they've endured. The execution of this theme was brilliant. The writing is excellent and accessible. I'm so happy I picked it up.
Here are a few more quotes that I loved:
"I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?"
“It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love.”
“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”
“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?'
Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
“You are very harsh.'
'I have seen the world.”
“But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything--in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.'
'You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure.”
“Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.”
Comments