And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
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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Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.
DENIS DIDEROT -
A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it. Skepticism is the first step toward truth.
DENIS DIDEROT -
If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.
DENIS DIDEROT -
The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
DENIS DIDEROT -
When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the heartsof others.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
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 -
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 -
People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you’ve got to keep your feet warm.
DENIS DIDEROT -
All children are essentially criminal.
DENIS DIDEROT -
You have to make it happen.
DENIS DIDEROT -
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.
DENIS DIDEROT -
There’s a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of begging.
DENIS DIDEROT -
My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.
DENIS DIDEROT -
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
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 -
I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
DENIS DIDEROT -
If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.
DENIS DIDEROT -
Good music is very close to primitive language.
DENIS DIDEROT -
In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.
DENIS DIDEROT -
A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.
DENIS DIDEROT