Cover of The Man of Forty Crowns by Voltaire Ebook The Man of Forty Crowns
Ebook · Urban Romantics

The Man of Forty Crowns

Author
Voltaire
Series
World Classics
Language
English
Length
56 pages
ISBN
9781911495437
Published
13 July 2016
Imprint
Urban Romantics
  • Voltaire
  • enlightenment
  • history
  • philosophy
  • humour
  • wit
  • poetry
  • epic
  • romantic
  • philosophical

Description

The causes of our poverty; a poverty which we hide under varnished ceilings, or with the help of our dealers in fashion. We are poor with taste. There are some officers of revenue, there are contractors or jobbers, there are merchants, very rich; their children, their sons-in-law, are also very rich, but the nation in general is unfortunately not so.

Author

Voltaire (1694–1778) made French prose feel like a blade you could pocket. Candide moves too fast for consolation: earthquake, war, and a garden that is not a philosophy so much as a last useful sentence. The letters, the tales, the long public quarrel with superstition — they share one climate. Ridicule here is not decoration. It is how a mind stays free in a crowded century.

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