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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.

Denis Diderot

If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the “enthusiasm for truth and justice” using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.
DENIS DIDEROT

Dedication Enthusiasm Goodness Life Sense
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
DENIS DIDEROT

Philosophy Religion Separate
All children are essentially criminal.
DENIS DIDEROT

Children Crime Essential
The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.
DENIS DIDEROT

Best Doctor Finding Oneself Run
First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.
DENIS DIDEROT

Astonishment Eyes Move Myself
Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
DENIS DIDEROT

Evil Genius World
Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.
DENIS DIDEROT

Artist Essential Moral Perspective Quality
The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
DENIS DIDEROT

Adult Eyes Infant Man Old
Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: ‘My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.’ This stranger is a theologian.
DENIS DIDEROT

Finding Forest Night Order Stranger Wander Yourself
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.
DENIS DIDEROT

Divorce Improvement Marriage Partner Population Possible
I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
DENIS DIDEROT

God Novel Rare
To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.
DENIS DIDEROT

Butterfly Color Pen Wings Woman
Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
DENIS DIDEROT

Hands King Priest
Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.
DENIS DIDEROT

Poetry Savage Scale

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Denis Diderot Quotes