Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.
DENIS DIDEROTIn order to get as much fame as one’s father one has to much more able than he.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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I am wholly yours – you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.
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There is only one duty; that is to be happy.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.
DENIS DIDEROT -
How easy it is to tell tales!
DENIS DIDEROT -
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
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The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
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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.
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I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Good music is very close to primitive language.
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Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
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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.
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First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.
DENIS DIDEROT -
And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Scepticism is the first step towards truth.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
My ideas are my whores.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Distance is a great promoter of admiration.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
DENIS DIDEROT -
All children are essentially criminal.
DENIS DIDEROT -
What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
DENIS DIDEROT -
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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