Life & Wisdom Quote by Voltaire

Voltaire’s line lands like a compliment that curdles on the tongue. He gives “Time” the solemn job title of reputational judge, then reveals the court is easily bribed: not by virtue, but by endurance. The sting is in “alone.” If time is the only force that “makes” a reputation, then merit is secondary to survival, repetition, and the public’s growing comfort with whatever keeps showing up.

The subtext is Voltaire’s favorite target: respectable society’s talent for laundering moral mess into tradition. “Defects” don’t disappear; they get rebranded. What begins as scandal, cruelty, vanity, or incompetence can, with enough years and enough habituation, become “character,” “temperament,” even “genius.” The mechanism is psychological (we normalize what we can’t change), political (institutions protect their elders), and aesthetic (flaws acquire patina, like a cracked antique that signals authenticity). “Respectable” is the dagger word: it doesn’t mean good, only socially permitted.

Context matters. Voltaire wrote in a world of inherited rank, court patronage, and sanctioned hypocrisy, where a man’s standing often outlived his conduct. Enlightenment rhetoric promised reason and reform; Voltaire keeps pointing out how quickly those promises get domesticated by custom. The line doubles as a warning to readers and writers alike: don’t confuse longevity with legitimacy. Time can canonize almost anything, including the rot, as long as it’s old enough to feel inevitable.