"One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it"
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Quote collection
Denis Diderot quotes (page 9 of 10)
187 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly."
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"In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he."
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"Whatever dressing one gives to mushrooms, to whatever sauces our Apiciuses put them, they are not really good but to be sent back to the dungheap where they are born."
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"Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste."
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"L'homme est ne pour la socie te ; se parez-le, isolez-le, ses ide es se de suniront, son caracte' re se tournera, mille affections ridicules s'e le' veront dans son coeur; des 274 pense es extravagantes germeront dans son esprit, comme les ronces dans une terre sauvage. Man is born to live in society: separate him, isolate him, and his ideas disintegrate, his character changes, a thousand ridiculous affectations rise up in his heart; extreme thoughts take hold in his mind, like the brambles in a wild field."
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"Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths."
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"When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz , one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner."
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"Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones."
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"There are cats and cats."
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"There comes a moment during which almost every girl or boy falls into melancholy; they are tormented by a vague inquietude which rests on everything and finds nothing to calm it. They seek solitude; they weep; the silence to be found in cloister attracts them: the image of peace that seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. 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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"Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race."
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"Gentleness and peacefulness regulate our proceedings; theirs are dictated by fury. We employ reason, they accumulate faggots. They preach nothing but love, and breathe nothing but blood. Their words are humane, but their hearts are cruel."
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"En ge ne ral, plus un peuple est civilise , poli, moins ses moeurs sont poe tiques; tout s'affaiblit en s'adoucissant. Ingeneral, themore civilized and refinedthepeople, the less poetic are its morals; everything weakens as it mellows."
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"The enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac."
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"I feel, I think, I judge; therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging."
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"Le public ne sait pas toujours de sirer le vrai. Thepublicdoesnot alwaysknowhow todesirethetruth."
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"How easy it is to tell tales!"
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"Tous les jours on couche avec des femmes qu'on n'aime pas, et l'on ne couche pas avec des femmes qu'on aime. Every day we sleep with women we do not love and don't sleep with the women we do love."
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"It is raining bombs on the house of the Lord. I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties."
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