Quotation
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“That is well said, but we must cultivate our garden.”
Voltaire · Enlightenment · Enlightenment · 1759
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the last line as a turn from abstract theodicy to limited practical work: after the disasters of the tale, cultivating the garden is what remains, against Pangloss's claim that all is for the best. It is Candide speaking, in a satire. A rival reading hears either a cosy retirement into private life or a coded call to a particular political programme, both of which are heavier than the scene. Chapter 30 settles the little company on a farm; The sentence refuses the speech about optimism; It does not explain the earthquakes.
Did Voltaire really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of the last sentence of Candide, spoken by Candide to Pangloss, not as an essay in Voltaire's own voice. The French is il faut cultiver notre jardin. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Candide, chapter 30
Approximate date: 1759.
How to use it
After a meeting in a community garden in Tottenham that has spent an hour on why the world is arranged as it is, the closing line would send people back to the beds, the rota, and the gate that does not lock. Voltaire's scene includes that scale of work, and it includes bitterness. It is not a claim that local vegetables answer a massacre; Quoting it at people in the middle of a public injustice, as if they should go home and dig, uses a satire as a gag.
A mindset reading
The sentence is loved because it sounds like wisdom and can mean almost anything. In the book it answers a particular habit, the habit of explaining horror as necessary. Cultivating the garden is an alternative to that speech, inside a fiction; A rival reading that makes it the whole of Voltaire's politics forgets the campaigns, the dictionary, and the protests; Candide is one work; The last line is one character's last word.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is the garden, a small field of work set against Pangloss's philosophy that this is the best of all possible worlds. Chapter 30 is the end of the novella of 1759. Candide speaks the line. The English is a standard translation of a secure French sentence; The satire has already taken the company through war, Lisbon, and Eldorado, so the garden is a conclusion about scale, not a first thought about politics.
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FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the last line as a turn from abstract theodicy to limited practical work: after the disasters of the tale, cultivating the garden is what remains, against Pangloss's claim that all is for the best. It is Candide speaking, in a satire. A rival reading hears either a cosy retirement into private life or a coded call to a particular political programme, both of which are heavier than the scene. Chapter 30 settles the little company on a farm; The sentence refuses the speech about optimism; It does not explain the earthquakes.
Did Voltaire really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of the last sentence of Candide, spoken by Candide to Pangloss, not as an essay in Voltaire's own voice. The French is il faut cultiver notre jardin. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Candide, chapter 30 Approximate date: 1759.