"What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it."
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Denis Diderot quotes (page 4 of 10)
187 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other."
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"When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the heartsof others."
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"To be born in imbecility, in the midst of pain and crisis; to be the plaything of ignorance, error, need, sickness, wickedness, and passions; to return step by step to imbecility, from the time of lisping to that of doting; to live among knaves and charlatans of all kinds; to die between one man who takes your pulse and another who troubles your head; never to know where you come from, why you come and where you are going! That is what is called the most important gift of our parents and nature. Life."
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"He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature."
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"You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his."
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"There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people."
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"If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him."
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"Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it."
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"The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action."
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"And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings."
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"The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre"
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"There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself."
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"I am wholly yours - you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours."
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"There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness."
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"What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth."
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"When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music."
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"La poe sie veutquelque chose d'e norme, debarbare et de sauvage. Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage."
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"To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!"
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"Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower."
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