"The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me."
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Denis Diderot quotes (page 7 of 10)
187 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population."
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"One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself."
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"The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children."
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"We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures."
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"The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum."
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"If there were a reason for preferring the Christian religion to natural religion, it would be because the former offers us, on the nature of God and man, enlightenment that the latter lacks. Now, this is not at all the case; for Christianity, instead of clarifying, gives rise to an infinite multitude of obscurities and difficulties."
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"When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years."
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"Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point."
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"Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it."
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"Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does."
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"Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man."
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"One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few."
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"Scepticism is the first step toward truth."
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"If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful."
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"The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled."
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"Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?"
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"We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves."
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"If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless."
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"They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish."
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