God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Although widely attributed to Voltaire, this aphorism reads like a modern motivational paraphrase rather than a traceable line from his French prose. Taken on its own terms, it contrasts passive receipt (life as a given) with active moral agency (living well as a choice). The first clause invokes providence or nature as the source of existence; the second shifts responsibility to the individual, implying that meaning, virtue, and happiness are not guaranteed by mere survival. The phrasing also suggests an Enlightenment-inflected ethic: human flourishing depends on deliberate cultivation—reason, character, and conduct—rather than on inherited status or external fate.