Denis Diderot Quotes - Page 4

First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.

And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.

It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.

If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.

At an early age I sucked up the milk of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Terence, Anacreon, Plato and Euripides, diluted with that of Moses and the prophets.

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.

The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.

I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

The best doctor is the one you run to and can't find.

One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it

There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.

Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.

The world is the house of the strong.

Une danse est un poe' me. A dance is a poem.

But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!

All children are essentially criminal.

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.