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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

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
DENIS DIDEROT

Machine Order Ordinary Quality
The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre
DENIS DIDEROT

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

Dignity Man Myself Willing
There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
DENIS DIDEROT

Adjust Change Force Need Point View
In order to get as much fame as one’s father one has to much more able than he.
DENIS DIDEROT

Fame Father Himself Order
Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
DENIS DIDEROT

Design Disturb Trouble True
Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
DENIS DIDEROT

Genius Madness Raise Status
Does anyone really know where they’re going to?
DENIS DIDEROT

Direction Journey Path
To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.
DENIS DIDEROT

Definition Himself Man Strength Weakness
Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.
DENIS DIDEROT

Destroy Doctor Preserve Success Work
Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.
DENIS DIDEROT

Fine Himself Live Man Peace Possession Purity Religious
There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.
DENIS DIDEROT

Civilization Inflict Kind Man Society Woman
Time, matter, space – all, it may be, are no more than a point.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.
DENIS DIDEROT

Desire Hope Immortal Myself
To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
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

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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