François Marie Arouet (1694–1778) was born into a well-to-do family in Paris. He was educated at an excellent Jesuit school, where his teachers found him to be brilliant but difficult to control. His father wanted François to follow him in the profession of law, but the young man chose instead to pursue a life in literature. At the age of twenty-three, he added the words de Voltaire to his name, creating a pen name under which he became famous. In fencing, a volt is a step aside to avoid an opponent's thrust. The name Voltaire appropriately reflects the razor-sharp wit and adroit maneuvering of Voltaire's writing. As a young writer, Voltaire won acclaim for his dramatic works. However, he ran afoul of certain French nobles and was twice imprisoned in the Bastille. In his mid-thirties, he was exiled to England, where he became friends with Swift, Pope, and other leading writers and thinkers. Impressed by the relative freedom of thought in England, Voltaire wrote his Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais (Philosophical Letters on the English). Upon returning to France, he published this work, a satirical attack on the French church and state, and was forced into exile once again. For most of the rest of his life, he lived outside France, making brilliant contributions to Diderot's Encyclopedie and writing satirical tales such as Zadig (1747) and Candide (1759). Voltaire's name has become synonymous with wit and frank good sense in opposition to all forms of intolerance, tyranny, hereditary privilege, dogma, and unexamined convention.