Zadig

Zadig; or The Book of Fate is a 1747 work of fiction by Voltaire that is sometimes cited as having been influential on the detective writing of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. I'm reading Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story, by Howard Haycraft, and Voltaire's Zadig is listed in the "definitive library of detective-crime-mystery fiction". It's called "the great-grandfather of the detective story". I thought I'd check it out just to see. It's readily available in English translation online here and other places.

It's not very hard to get into, so not having access to a more recent translation isn't a problem.

particular quotes that struck me as I read:

Self-love is like a Bladder full blown, which when once prick’d, discharges a kind of petty Tempest.

One continued Scene of Pleasure, is no Pleasure at all.

Flints will never soften; and Creatures, that are by Nature venemous, forever retain their Poison.

’Tis an old saying, that a Person is less unhappy when he sees himself not singular in Misfortune.

two Persons in bad Circumstances, are like two weak Shrubs, which, by propping up each other, are fenc’d against a Storm.

Health is to be secur’d by Temperance and Exercise; and that the Art of making Health consistent with Luxury, is altogether as impracticable, and an Art, in all Respects, as idle and chimerical, as those of the Philosopher’s Stone, judicial Astrology, or any other Reveries of the like airy and fantastic Nature.