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There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

Denis Diderot

I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
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
In 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 DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of begging.
DENIS DIDEROT

Beg Compassionate Man Poor Possible Shame
Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.
DENIS DIDEROT

Poetry Savage Scale
It is raining bombs on the house of the Lord. I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties.
DENIS DIDEROT

Difficult God Home Raining
There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
DENIS DIDEROT

Adjust Change Force Need Point View
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
And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
DENIS DIDEROT

Hands King Priest
Does anyone really know where they’re going to?
DENIS DIDEROT

Direction Journey Path
When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz , one is tempted to throw away one’s books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
DENIS DIDEROT

Compare Corner Forget Talent Temptation
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
DENIS DIDEROT

Believe God Important
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

Bad Country Goodness Government Moral
Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.
DENIS DIDEROT

Philosophy Religion Separate
One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Demand Finding Oneself Seek Truth
There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.
DENIS DIDEROT

Death Fear Happiness Justice Virtue

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

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There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

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