The man who mocked 'the best of all worlds' concluded: tend your plot

Voltaire was the defining writer of the French Enlightenment, attacking religious fanaticism and abuses of power with razor-sharp satire. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which killed tens of thousands, pushed him to ridicule the fashionable optimism that 'this is the best of all possible worlds.'

In his later years, Voltaire settled on an estate at Ferney near the Swiss border, where he planted trees, farmed, and set up watchmaking workshops that revived a declining village. Candide's final line echoes his own choice: concrete work with dirt on one's hands instead of grand metaphysical debate.