Fate would make us wretched here, But hope shall dry up every tear; In sorrow he shall give us rest, And make us even in anguish blest: Love shall preserve us from the paths of vice, And strew his flowers around the precipice. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Socrates is a play in three acts about Socrates and the events of his trial and eventual death. Satirical in nature it takes aim at government authority and organized religion. Voltaire's contempt for government and religion come through clearly in this play. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

In his preface to this play Voltaire says: "The learned will not here meet with a faithful narrative of Catiline's conspiracy: a tragedy, they very well know, is not a history, but they will see a true picture of the manners of those times: all that Cicero, Catiline, Cato and Caesar do in this piece is not true, but their genius and character are faithfully represented: if we do not there discover the eloquence of Cicero, we shall at least find displayed all that courage and virtue which he showed in the hour of danger. In Catiline is described that contrast of fierceness and dissimulation...

Orestes was produced in 1750, an experiment which intensely interested the literary world and the public. In his Dedicatory Letters to the Duchess of Maine, Voltaire has the following passage on the Greek drama: "We should not, I acknowledge, endeavor to imitate what is weak and defective in the ancients: it is most probable that their faults were well known to their contemporaries. I am satisfied, Madam, that the wits of Athens condemned, as well as you, some of those repetitions, and some declamations with which Sophocles has loaded his Electra: they must have observed that he had not dived...

Candide, a pampered nobleman, is suddenly thrust out of his sheltered life into a cold uncaring world that does not care about his gentle upbringing. Candide witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world and must depend on his wits and quick actions to survive. Candide is sarcastic, erratic, fantastical, and fast-moving. This wonderful novel parodies many adventure and romance cliches Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers through allegory. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This...

Zadig is a philosopher in ancient Babylonia. Voltaire did not attempt historical accuracy with this book. Many of the problems Zadig faces are thinly disguised references to social and political problems of Voltaire's own day. Zadig is philosophical in nature, and presents human life as being beyond human control. It is a story of religious and metaphysical orthodoxy, both of which Voltaire challenges with his presentation of the moral revolution taking place in Zadig himself. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep...

Alzire first appeared on the stage in 1736 to great acclaim and success. Alzire is set Lima, Peru, at the time of the Spanish conquest. Don Gusman, a Spanish grandee, has just succeeded his father, Don Alvarez, in the Governorship of Peru. The rule of Don Alvarez had been beneficent and just; he had spent his life in endeavoring to soften the cruelty of his countrymen; and his only remaining wish was to see his son carry on the work which he had begun. Unfortunately, however, Don Gusman's temperament was the very opposite of his father's; he was tyrannical, harsh, headstrong, and bigoted. It...

I don't belong to the house, sir; but I spend most of my time in the coffee-room; write news, politics, and so forth, and am always ready to do an honest gentleman service. If you have any friend you want to have praised, or any enemy to be abused; any author you want to protect or to decry; 'tis but one guinea per paragraph: if you are desirous of cultivating any acquaintance for profit or pleasure, sir, I am your man. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the...

"This Comedy is called in the French Nanine, ou le Prejuge Vaincu (Nanine, or Prejudice Overcome). It is written, as we are told in the title-page, in verses of ten syllables. The absurdity of comedies in rhyme I have already remarked. The original begins thus: Il faut parler, il faut, Monsieur le Comte, Vous expliquer nettement sur mon Compte. The reader cannot but observe, what villainous rhymes Comte and Compte are, and perhaps will more readily forgive my reducing this comedy into plain prose. It was produced in 1749."-Voltaire Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books...

This comedy is partly imitated from an English piece, called the Plain Dealer. It does not suit very well for the French stage; the manners are too rough and bold, though much less so than in the original. The English seem to take too much liberty, and the French too little. -Voltaire Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.