Indeed, Candide learns that the amount of good is much less than that of evil.It’s the famous Lisbon earthquake in 1755 that seems to be the cause of Voltaire’s rejection of optimism. Pangloss and Candide are arrested by the Inquisition. The Indoctrination and Sheltered Beginnings of Candide Biography of Alexander Pope, England's Most Quoted Poet Helpless and hungry, he is forced to beg for food. Quest because happiness is built against the vagaries of fate, the madness of men and general unreason.Voltaire hates optimism and its creator, the German philosopher Leibniz, who is embodied and parodied through the character of Pangloss. ""Let us work without theorizing," Voltaire says, "...'tis the only way to make life endurable." "Read on to explore a few of the quotes from this great literary work below, in order of their appearance in the novella.Voltaire begins his satirical work with a not-too-kind observation of what we are taught is right in the world, from the idea of wearing glasses to the concept of being pantless, all under the lens of "all is for the best:"But when Candide leaves his school and enters the world outside his safe home, he is confronted with armies, which he finds splendid as well, for different reasons: "Nothing could be smarter, more splendid, more brilliant, better drawn up than two armies...Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, cannons, formed a harmony such as never been heard in hell" (Chapter Three).Bitingly, he comments in Chapter Four: "If Columbus in an island of America had not caught the disease, which poisons the source of generation, and often indeed prevents generation, we should not have chocolate and cochineal. Voltaire wonders if God is really good, or if he is really all-powerful. Unfortunately, this setting is fantastical and transitory. First, Candide’s uncle banishes him from the family’s country home and garden after he finds Candide kissing Cunégonde. "It was at this point that Candide, the character, realized that the world is almost wholly lost to "some evil creature," but there is a practical optimism in being adaptable to what the world still offers in its limited goodness, as long as one realizes the truth of where mankind has come to:Ultimately, after years of travel and hardships, Candide asks the ultimate question: would it be better to die or to continue doing nothing:Work, it is, then, that Voltaire posits will keep the mind occupied from the eternal pessimism of reality, the understanding that all of mankind has been dominated by an evil creature bent on war and destruction rather than peace and creation for, as he puts it in Chapter 30, "Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. How Candide is paradigmatic of the philosophy of the Candide is a vast work, which covers all the philosophical subjects of the time of Voltaire: religion and fanaticism, political freedom and tyranny, knowledge and obscurantism, happiness and fatality, freedom and slavery.It is ultimately this quest for happiness that recounts the adventures of Candide. It is therefore up to men to take control of their destiny and create good or evil: in any case, men are responsible for their world.Politically, Candide is moderate. Quote in context, in the translation by Philip Littell; available from Gutenberg.org: The whole little society entered into this laudable design, according to their different abilities. Esther Lombardi. Candide finds Cunégonde, now ugly. François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1766). An old man presents Eldorado as a wonderful world to Candide, but he prefers to try to find Cunégonde.Chapter 19. Candide and Martin leave for France. Pangloss tells his unhappy story, but his optimism resists.Chapter 29. but later conceded that his teacher Pangloss "deceived me cruelly when he said that all is for the best in the world.