Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice and…

The sentence is spoken at the end of Candide, in chapter XXX, by an old Turk whom Candide, Pangloss and Martin meet near Constantinople. The good man knows nothing of the affairs of the capital and is content to send his fruit there to be sold. Candide imagines him the master of a “vast and magnificent estate”; the Turk has only twenty acres, which he cultivates with his children, and he concludes with this maxim.

Back at his farm, Candide judges the old man’s lot “far preferable to that of the six kings” with whom they had supped. A few lines further on, the tale ends with the reply that has become proverbial: “we must cultivate our garden”.

Voltaire published Candide in 1759, without an author’s name, after the Lisbon earthquake and in the midst of the Seven Years’ War, to ridicule the optimism according to which all is for the best. The Turk’s sentence has become a tribute to work, often quoted with its setting forgotten: a small garden, far from grandeur.

Candide, chapter XXX (the old Turk), 1759

Original text checked word for word in the work; the translation is by quotesay.

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