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First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.

Denis Diderot

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
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
DENIS DIDEROT

Force Memories Ourselves Sentence Truth
Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
DENIS DIDEROT

Evil Genius World
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
From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
DENIS DIDEROT

Oneself Path Step
I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Expectation Finding Myself Truth
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 may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it.
DENIS DIDEROT

Demand Finding Oneself Seek Truth
Isn’t it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
DENIS DIDEROT

Better Chance Goodness Man
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
Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.
DENIS DIDEROT

Burden Gratitude Hard Time Hope
There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
DENIS DIDEROT

Happiness Oneself Passion
To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.
DENIS DIDEROT

Butterfly Color Pen Wings Woman
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
There are cats and cats.
DENIS DIDEROT

Cat One Liner
To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.
DENIS DIDEROT

Definition Himself Man Strength Weakness

First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.

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First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.

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