Voltaire Almighty

Voltaire Almighty PDF Author: Roger Pearson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408820803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 570

Get Book

Book Description
During much of his life Voltaire's plays and verse made him the toast of society, but his barbed wit and commitment to reason also got him into trouble. Jailed twice and eventually banished by the King, he was an outspoken critic of religious intolerance and persecution. His personal life was as colourful as his intellectual one. Voltaire never married, but had long-term affairs with two women: Emilie, who died after giving birth to the child of another lover, and his niece, Marie-Louise, with whom he spent his last twenty-five years. With its tales of illegitimacy, prison, stardom, exile, love affairs and tireless battles against critics, Church and King, Roger Pearson's brilliant biography brings Voltaire vividly to life.

Voltaire Almighty

Voltaire Almighty PDF Author: Roger Pearson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408820803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 570

Get Book

Book Description
During much of his life Voltaire's plays and verse made him the toast of society, but his barbed wit and commitment to reason also got him into trouble. Jailed twice and eventually banished by the King, he was an outspoken critic of religious intolerance and persecution. His personal life was as colourful as his intellectual one. Voltaire never married, but had long-term affairs with two women: Emilie, who died after giving birth to the child of another lover, and his niece, Marie-Louise, with whom he spent his last twenty-five years. With its tales of illegitimacy, prison, stardom, exile, love affairs and tireless battles against critics, Church and King, Roger Pearson's brilliant biography brings Voltaire vividly to life.

Voltaire in Love

Voltaire in Love PDF Author: Nancy Mitford
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590175786
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book

Book Description
The inimitable Nancy Mitford’s account of Voltaire’s fifteen-year relationship with the Marquise du Châtelet—the renowned mathematician who introduced Isaac Newton’s revolutionary new physics to France—is a spirited romp in the company of two extraordinary individuals as well as an erudite and gossipy guide to French high society during the Enlightenment. Mitford’s story is as delicious as it is complicated. The marquise was in love with another mathematician, Maupertuis, while she had an unexpected rival for Voltaire’s affections in the future Frederick the Great of Prussia (and later in the philosophe’s own niece). There was, at least, no jealous husband to contend with: the Marquis du Châtelet, Mitford assures us, behaved perfectly. The beau monde of Paris was, however, distraught at the idea of the lovers’ brilliant conversation going to waste on the windswept hills of Champagne, site of the Château de Cirey, where experimental laboratories, a darkroom, and a library of more than twenty-one thousand volumes enabled them to pursue their amours philosophiques. From time to time the threat of impending arrest would send Voltaire scurrying across the border into Holland, but his irrepressible charm—and the interventions of powerful friends—always made it possible for him resume his studies with the cherished marquise.

Voltaire

Voltaire PDF Author: Ian Davidson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681770393
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 429

Get Book

Book Description
The definitive biography of Voltaire's life—from his scandalous love affairs and political maneuverings to his inspired philosophy. We think of Voltaire as the archetypal figure of the enlightenment; in his own time he was also the most famous and controversial figure in Europe. This dazzling new biography celebrates his extraordinary life. Davidson tells the whole, rich story of Voltaire’s life (1694-1778): his early imprisonment in the Bastille; exile in England and his mastery of English; an obsession with money, of which he made a huge amount; a scandalous love life; a long exile on the borders of Switzerland; his human-rights campaigns and his triumphant return to Paris to die there as celebrity extraordinaire. Throughout all of this, Voltaire’s life was always informed by two things: a belief in the essential value of toleration in the face of fanaticism; and in the right of every man to think and say what he liked. It is rare to have such a vivid portrait of a great man.

The Philosophical Dictionary

The Philosophical Dictionary PDF Author: Voltaire
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book

Book Description


Candide

Candide PDF Author: Voltaire Voltaire
Publisher: Xist Publishing
ISBN: 1681959526
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 151

Get Book

Book Description
Candide by Voltaire from Coterie Classics All Coterie Classics have been formatted for ereaders and devices and include a bonus link to the free audio book. “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?” ― Voltaire, Candide Candide is a young man who is raised in wealth to be an optimist but when he is forced to make his own way in the world, his assumptions and outlook are challenged.

Voltaire in Exile

Voltaire in Exile PDF Author: Ian Davidson
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802142368
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book

Book Description
"In Voltaire in Exile, Ian Davidson has re-created this period in the life of one of the giant figures of the Enlightenment. By painstakingly translating the rich correspondence between Voltaire and his family, members of the Court at Versailles, and the French intellectual elite, Davidson allows us to discover Voltaire the artist, the campaigner, the aesthete, the lover, the humorist. The result is a portrait of this funny, iconoclastic, complex, and ferociously intelligent individual - the man Diderot described as "the unique man of the century.""--Jacket.

Voltaire

Voltaire PDF Author: Wayne Andrews
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811208024
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Get Book

Book Description
Andrews, Voltaire A short, witty, and insightful biography

Philosophical Dictionary

Philosophical Dictionary PDF Author: Francois Voltaire
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141915218
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 787

Get Book

Book Description
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, first published in 1764, is a series of short, radical essays - alphabetically arranged - that form a brilliant and bitter analysis of the social and religious conventions that then dominated eighteenth-century French thought. One of the masterpieces of the Enlightenment, this enormously influential work of sardonic wit - more a collection of essays arranged alphabetically, than a conventional dictionary - considers such diverse subjects as Abraham and Atheism, Faith and Freedom of Thought, Miracles and Moses. Repeatedly condemned by civil and religious authorities, Voltaire's work argues passionately for the cause of reason and justice, and criticizes Christian theology and contemporary attitudes towards war and society - and claims, as he regards the world around him: 'common sense is not so common'.

Voltaire

Voltaire PDF Author: Jason Porterfield
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 9781404204232
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Get Book

Book Description
Presents the life of the French philosopher, discussing his literary and philosophical writings, his tumultuous relationships with some of the rulers and thinkers of his day, and his lasting influence on French culture.

Voltaire's Bastards

Voltaire's Bastards PDF Author: John Ralston Saul
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476718962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 657

Get Book

Book Description
Argues that blind faith in reason has resulted in problems in every phase of social life, suggests reason is an administrative method rather than a moral force, and proposes some solutions.