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The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.

Denis Diderot

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Denis Diderot
Age: 70 †
Born: 1713
Born: October 5
Died: 1784
Died: July 31
Abbé
Art Critic
Art Theorist
Correspondent
Encyclopédistes
Essayist
Historian
Lexicographer
Literary Critic
Literary Theorist
Lumières
Diderot
Wicked
Theatre
Theater
Tears
Place
Mingled
Men
Pits
Alike
Virtuous

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He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
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The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
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La poe sie veutquelque chose d'e norme, debarbare et de sauvage. Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.
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The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
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There is only one virtue, justice only one duty, to be happy only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.
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Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.
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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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All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings... We must run roughshod over all these ancient puerilities, overturn the barriers that reason never erected, give back to the arts and sciences the liberty that is so precious to them.
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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.
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How easy it is to tell tales!
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One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself.
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Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
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Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.
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Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.
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All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.
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What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
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En ge ne ral, plus un peuple est civilise , poli, moins ses moeurs sont poe tiques tout s'affaiblit en s'adoucissant. Ingeneral, themore civilized and refinedthepeople, the less poetic are its morals everything weakens as it mellows.
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Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
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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 general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
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