Life & Wisdom Quote by Voltaire

Eighty years in, Voltaire doesn’t offer wisdom so much as an anti-souvenir: the kind of insight you get when the promised moral arc of the universe never shows up. The line’s brilliance is its cold domesticity. Instead of metaphysics, he gives you a kitchen-table ecology lesson: flies for spiders, humans for sorrow. Nature becomes a template for suffering, not comfort. The verb choices do the damage. “Born” and “devoured” reduce life to a food chain where consciousness is just another edible. Resignation isn’t peace; it’s the posture of someone who has stopped bargaining with reality.

The subtext is Voltaire’s long war with the idea that pain is secretly beneficial. This is the writer who mocked the optimism that declared everything “for the best,” especially after events like the Lisbon earthquake made pious explanations sound obscene. Here, experience doesn’t refine character; it strips away the flattering stories. Sorrow isn’t a passing storm but a predator with an appetite, and “man” is framed as its natural prey.

What makes it work is the sneaky pivot from entomology to anthropology. It’s funny in a grim way, because the comparison is so blunt it borders on childish - and that’s the point. Philosophical systems can get elaborate; suffering doesn’t. Voltaire’s intent is to puncture consolation with a scalpel: if the world runs on consumption, then the humane response isn’t theological reassurance. It’s lucid pity, anger at facile optimism, and a demand that we build whatever meaning we can without pretending the universe owes us one.