Our Labour Preserves Us From Three

Spoken by the old Turkish farmer near the end of Candide (1759) and echoed in the novel's conclusion, this is Voltaire's practical answer to philosophical despair. After Candide asks how the farmer endures life's evils, the farmer explains that work keeps three great dangers at bay: idleness, vice, and poverty. The passage reinforces the novel's closing moral — "we must cultivate our garden" — as an endorsement of productive engagement with immediate reality over abstract speculation. The Stoic resonance is intentional; Voltaire had read Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and integrated their practical ethics into his own Enlightenment framework.