Candide

In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the most gentle manners. His countenance was a true picture of his soul. He combined a true judgment with simplicity of spirit, which was the reason, I apprehend, of his being called Candide.

Candide expelled through earthquake, war, slavery, and Eldorado demolishes optimism episodically rather than resolving causally, so plot scores 86.

they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said all is for the best." Candide listened attentively and believed innocently; for he thought Miss Cunegonde extremely beautiful, though he never had the courage to tell her so.

Candide the innocent, Pangloss the philosopher, Cunegonde, Martin, and the old woman are types more than depths, which suits satire, so cast scores 82.

give the people a beautiful auto-da-fe; for it had been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible secret to hinder the earth from quaking.

Thirty short chapters span globe-spanning catastrophes at comic speed with no chapter overstays, so pace scores 92.

"that we must cultivate our garden." "You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle."

Voltaire's lucid ironies and aphoristic prose spawn centuries of quotation, so prose scores 88.

and have called it El Dorado; and an Englishman, whose name was Sir Walter Raleigh, came very near it about a hundred years ago; but being surrounded by inaccessible rocks and precipices, we have hitherto been sheltered from the rapaciousness of European nations.

Westphalia, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, El Dorado, and Venice form a satirical map of Enlightenment Europe where disaster follows optimism, so world scores 85.

In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the most gentle manners. His countenance was a true picture of his soul.

Ch.I's castle idyll and Pangloss's 'all is for the best' state the thesis to be systematically refuted; Candide's expulsion follows swiftly, so hook scores 88.

Master Pangloss, the greatest philosopher of the whole province, and consequently of the whole world, used to teach that everything was for the best and that noses were made for spectacles.

The philosophical tale as demolition machine testing Leibnizian optimism by catastrophe—template for Swift and satirical sci-fi, so innov scores 94.

"Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable." The whole little society entered into this laudable design, according to their different abilities.

'Cultivate our garden' refuses grand answers for modest labour—the most quoted closing in French literature, so ending scores 93.