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There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

Denis Diderot

The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.
DENIS DIDEROT

Children Father God Himself
Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
DENIS DIDEROT

Man Philosophy Poster Religious
Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
DENIS DIDEROT

Bad Confusion Different Follow Reveal Truth
If you disturb the colors of the rainbow, the rainbow is no longer beautiful.
DENIS DIDEROT

Beautiful Color Disturb Rainbow
The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
DENIS DIDEROT

Action Allow Freedom Genius Interest Place
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 DIDEROT

Action Direction Generous Object
One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few.
DENIS DIDEROT

Composition Rich
Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.
DENIS DIDEROT

Destroy Passion Philosophy Prejudice
My ideas are my whores.
DENIS DIDEROT

Ideas One Liner Whore
Time, matter, space – all, it may be, are no more than a point.
DENIS DIDEROT

Anand Thakur
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 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 DIDEROT

Divorce Improvement Marriage Partner Population Possible
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
DENIS DIDEROT

Gentle Himself Man Nature
There is only one duty; that is to be happy.
DENIS DIDEROT

Happiness Oneself Responsibility
Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.
DENIS DIDEROT

Destroy Doctor Preserve Success Work
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
Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.
DENIS DIDEROT

Authority Break Goodness Oneself Privacy
There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Convenience Moral Perception
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
DENIS DIDEROT

Machine Order Ordinary Quality
How easy it is to tell tales!
DENIS DIDEROT

Easy Story
No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.
DENIS DIDEROT

Enjoyment Heaven Man Nature Reason Receive
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
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

Anand Thakur
Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.
DENIS DIDEROT

Evil Goodness High Master Writing
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
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

Himself Passion Pleasure Source
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.
DENIS DIDEROT

Poetry Vast Wild

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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