“Life is nothing but boredom or whipped cream.”
—Voltaire
His ideas inflamed the mentalities of one half of Europe while his witty words amused the other half: Voltaire, more than any other, contributed to affirmer the notions of rationalism and tolerance as we know them. In the war of ideas, the verb was his weapon. An encyclopaedia of epistolary thought whose lucidity and intellectual audacity never cease to amaze us.
With its 15,000 recorded letters, the correspondence of Voltaire (1694-1778) is a true monument of the Republic of Letters, and a work in itself within the abundant literary and philosophical production of the man who embodied the spirit of the Enlightenment. This great thinker with a complex personality, a fervent defender of the spirit against obscurantism, maintained himself in his correspondence with the monarchs and thinkers of his time in a versatile, serious and entertaining style.
