Denis Diderot Quotes
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If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant’s reasoning to the grown man’s passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.
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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
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If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.
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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.
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To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
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The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
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La reconnaissance est un fardeau, et tout fardeau est fait pour être secoué.
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Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
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The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and … people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.
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One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
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The world is the house of the strong. I shall not know until the end what I have lost or won in this place, in this vast gambling den where I have spent more than sixty years, dicebox in hand, shaking the dice.
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To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!
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The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.
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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.
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It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.
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I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.
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Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois.
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Je m’entretiens avec moi-même de politique, d’amour, de goût ou de philosophie ; j’abandonne mon esprit à tout son libertinage ; je le laisse maître de suivre la première idée sage ou folle qui se présente … Mes pensées ce sont mes catins.
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L'esprit de l'escalier
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What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.