Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one’s fatherland, which is perishable?
DENIS DIDEROTIt is raining bombs on the house of the Lord. I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties.
More Denis Diderot Quotes
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It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one’s innocence with the loss of one’s prejudices.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.
DENIS DIDEROT -
We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
DENIS DIDEROT -
You have to make it happen.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The world is the house of the strong.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Isn’t it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.
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 -
First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
There’s a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
DENIS DIDEROT