Today, the Quote of the Day is by French writer and philosopher Voltaire. His quote, “Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well,” reflects on human connection, learning, and emotional growth.
Meaning of the Quote
– Voltaire
This quote is widely attributed to the . It beautifully captures how recognising greatness in others enriches our own character.
By this quote, Voltaire means that when we genuinely admire the good qualities, talents, or achievements of other people, we also gain something from them ourselves.
By genuinely appreciating and recognising the greatness in others—like their wisdom, courage, or kindness— in some way, we are inspired to internalise those same traits.
Appreciation turns inspiration into self-improvement; when we value excellence, we make it a part of our own character.
It’s also believed that people unconsciously imitate what they repeatedly value.
When you deeply appreciate honesty, creativity, confidence, or discipline in someone else, your mind begins to notice and practise those same qualities.
About Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was a writer, philosopher, poet, dramatist, historian and polemicist of the French Enlightenment.
Born in Paris into a wealthy bourgeois family in 1694, Voltaire’s name in modern republican France stands as a cultural icon, a symbol of rationalism and the defence of tolerance.
His profile on the website of says that the diversity of his literary output is rivalled only by its abundance: the critical edition of his complete works begun in 1968 and finished in 2022 comprises 205 hardback volumes.
‘The age of Voltaire’ became synonymous with ‘the Enlightenment’, but although Voltaire’s eminence as a philosophe is self-evident, the precise originality of his thought and writings is less easily defined.
“Voltaire was a man of paradoxes: the bourgeois who as de Voltaire gave himself aristocratic pretensions, but who as plain Voltaire later became a hero of the Revolution; the conservative in aesthetic matters who appeared as a radical in religious and political issues. He was, above all, the master ironist, who, perhaps more than any other writer, gave to the Enlightenment its characteristic and defining tone of voice,” his profile read.
