I read a small book in my AP French class in high school, and it's colored my look on the world ever since.

[sir pball]

I've always remembered one line from it: "tout est pour le mieux, dans le meilleur des mondes possibles"–"everything happens for the best, in the best of all possible worlds"…

That book was called Candide, and it may be the single most important book of the Enlightenment, if not all of Western literature.

Needless to say, I don't agree with Pangloss (the guy who said "the best of all possible worlds" line).

[lostincalifornia]

1. Perhaps it is referring to the multiverse, parallel worlds etc.

[sir pball]

5. No...you should read the book.

It's short, and the English translations I've read are very good.

[lostincalifornia]

23. I wasn't being serious.

[Greybnk48]

2. One of my favorite books ever! n/t

[fierywoman]

3. If you want to be cheered up, listen to Leonard Bernstein conducting the Overture to Candide

(which he wrote) -- this version (elsewhere on YT) has June Anderson singing Glitter and be Gay which is quite funny !

[soldierant]

18. Funny and devilishly difficuly.

Voice teachers have been known to recommend that sopranos who have mastered or are mastering bel canto learn it.

I have a CD with excerpts from that performance. Jerry Hadley sang Candide. I miss him - his death was so tragic.

[fierywoman]

22. Do you know Kristin Chenoweth's version?

What a loss Hadley's death was.

The orchestra part has very hairy moments too!

[cachukis]

4. In light of that line, I have concluded,

everyone always does the best they can at the time they are doing it.
Have yet to find an argument against it.
The best of all worlds is always. Regardless.

[sir pball]

6. Have you read the book?

That's all I'll say.

[cachukis]

9. No. I came to my conclusion sans Voltaire.

[Ponietz]

7. Didn't Candide and the doctor dine on Cunegunde's (Sp?) buttock?

That didn’t shake Pangloss because it wasn’t his buttock

[soldierant]

15. I'm pretty sure the woman with one buttock

It was an older woman Candide ran across in South America while searching for El Dorado. (Cunegonde was still in Paris, a concubine shared by a Cardinal and a Rabbi, IIRC)

Leonard Bernstein and I forget now which two writers, but both very witty ones, made a musical out of it. Which wasn't a huge hit with the general public but us music and literature nerds love it. It was on TV once the Kirsten Chenoweth as Cunegonde, Paul Groves as Candide, Thomas Allen was in it - probably Pangloss - and the Old Lady with one buttock - wait for it - Patti Lupone. Wow.

[greatauntoftriplets]

8. A friend's mother like to tell her kids (and me) that "everything happens for the best".

I was never sure of that, but it fit her. A very kind woman, but a Republican. She died in 2011, and I often wonder what she would have made of drumpf.

My own mother hated him, dating to the early 1980s when he first came to national prominence. I've long felt the same way.

[Skittles]

17. what does that even mean, "everything happens for the best"

it sounds.....ridiculous

[greatauntoftriplets]

19. I agree.

It sounded Pollyanna-ish to me. I can think of lots more instances when that expression is the farthest thing from the truth, and very few when it applies.

I grew up wondering why so many of our parents' generation spoke in platitudes. Never figured that one out. I try to limit them except for "Everything drumpf touches dies".

[Skittles]

20. reminds me of people who are "always happy"

all I can think of is, WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU

[greatauntoftriplets]

21. I always want to slug the people who argue that you have no reason to be unhappy about something.

Or how hurt you've been. That's when my pale coloring betrays me, and I turn beet red. I do not have a poker face.

[raccoon]

25. That quote belongs in the trash along with "Everything happens for a reason."

[Skittles]

26. it sounds like religious nonsense

you know, the guy in the sky has got this

[edhopper]

10. I think Pangloss was voicing an opinion

that was not Voltaire's.

[Warren_Pointe]

11. I believe it comes from Leibniz.

But I think we all must tend our own gardens.

[hunter]

12. Yep, it's Leibniz, creator of calculus, binary arithmetic, statistics, and other stuff.

He had a very large garden.

[soldierant]

16. Indeed we must (you made me smile.)

[Ol Janx Spirit]

13. Voltaire was relentlessly satirizing nave optimism and shallow platitudes through the character...

...of Dr. Pangloss.

His teaching of "metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology" is meant to be highly ironic.

Having written many papers on Candide over the years as an English major, I've often thought about its relevance to our current situation, and--to me--it is from a bygone time when people believed that a perfect God created the world; therefore we live in the "best of all possible worlds". We do not suffer from that today IMO. If anything we may have a pessimism problem.

But it is an important work--one that I love.

We do have plenty of platitudes these days though....

[ColoringFool]

24. As An English Major, I Wrote One Paper on "Candide." I Can't...

Imagine writing "many"!

[PeaceWave]

14. Funny you should mention Candide. The line that has stuck with me all these years was...

the very last one - "Il faut cultiver notre jardin." - "We must cultivate our garden." That has since become central to my means of coping with the world.