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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.

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
Essentials
Petty
Respect
Sublime
Great
Realm
Kind
Criminal
Realms
Thief
Criminals
Spit
Essential
Wickedness
Deny
Thieves

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First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart make me tremble, weep, shudder outrage me delight my eyes afterwards if you can.
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Good music is very close to primitive language.
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Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.
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If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.
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Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.
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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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Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
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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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Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.
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Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.
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They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish.
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There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
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A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.
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And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
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The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.
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Only the bad man is alone.
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When shall we see poets born? After a time of disasters and great misfortunes, when harrowed nations begin to breathe again. And then, shaken by the terror of such spectacles, imaginations will paint things entirely strange to those who have not witnessed them.
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
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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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The world is the house of the strong.
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