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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

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

Finding Forest Night Order Stranger Wander Yourself
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

Anand Thakur
The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Demand Finding Oneself Seek Truth
To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
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

Build Distance Infinite Mad Plain Separate Tower
Scepticism is the first step toward truth.
DENIS DIDEROT

Path Step Truth
Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.
DENIS DIDEROT

Greatness Mindset Moral Passion Raise Small Soul
The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.
DENIS DIDEROT

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

Machine Order Ordinary Quality
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

Bad Company Innocent Instruction Loss One Prejudice
I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself. My ideas are my harlots.
DENIS DIDEROT

Discussion Love Mad Mindset Myself Politics Present Taste
Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.
DENIS DIDEROT

Hard Mad Oneself Suffering
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

Desire Fact Production True Willing
We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.
DENIS DIDEROT

Feeling Instrument Memories Object Surround

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

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