Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?
DENIS DIDEROTDoes not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?
DENIS DIDEROTThe best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.
DENIS DIDEROTThere are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
DENIS DIDEROTGaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
DENIS DIDEROTIn any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.
DENIS DIDEROTOnly the bad man is alone.
DENIS DIDEROTIn general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.
DENIS DIDEROTWhich is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one’s fatherland, which is perishable?
DENIS DIDEROTThere is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.
DENIS DIDEROTWhat is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
DENIS DIDEROTDisturbances 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 DIDEROTThe 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 DIDEROTOnly a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
DENIS DIDEROTJustice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
DENIS DIDEROTMorals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
DENIS DIDEROTHe whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
DENIS DIDEROT