Life & Wisdom Quote by Voltaire

Voltaire turns Cupid into a clinical sketch: not a cherub, but a tidy machine for self-deception. “Love has features which pierce all hearts” flatters the reader with inevitability, then immediately undercuts it. If love “pierces,” it’s less a blessing than a wound - abrupt, involuntary, and oddly impartial. The line’s elegance is the trap: you’re seduced by its lyricism while Voltaire smuggles in a darker claim about human suggestibility.

The best detail is the bandage. Love doesn’t merely overlook flaws; it actively conceals them, like an improvised blindfold. Voltaire’s Enlightenment instinct shows: sentiment is not sacred knowledge but a perceptual distortion, a filter placed over reason. Calling it a bandage also implies injury and first aid, as if lovers are tending to damage they can’t admit they’ve taken on.

Then come the wings: speed and flightiness packaged as mythic fact. “He comes quickly and flies away the same” punctures romantic narratives of permanence. Love is an event, not an institution - a visitation with a short attention span. In Voltaire’s century, when marriages were often economic arrangements and salons ran on flirtation, this lands as both social observation and philosophical warning. The subtext is sharp: we praise love for its transcendence while relying on it to excuse our bad judgments, then act surprised when the spell breaks. Voltaire isn’t denying love’s power; he’s diagnosing its method.