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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.

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
Philosophy
Strikes
Feeling
Senses
Soma
Feelings
Instruments
Endowed
Also
Medicine
Surrounding
Body
Perception
Struck
Many
Memory
Strike
Objects
Frequently
Memories
Strings

More quotes by Denis Diderot

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There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!
Denis Diderot
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
Denis Diderot
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To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race.
Denis Diderot
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There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
Denis Diderot
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Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.
Denis Diderot
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The fact is that she was terribly undressed and I was extremely undressed too. The fact is that I still had my hand where she didn't have anything and she had hers where the same wasn't quite true of me. The fact is that I found myself underneath her and consequently she found herself on top of me.
Denis Diderot
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The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
Denis Diderot
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In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.
Denis Diderot
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I feel, I think, I judge therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.
Denis Diderot
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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.
Denis Diderot
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A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.
Denis Diderot
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If the weather is too cold or rainy, I take shelter in the Regence Cafe, where I entertain myself by watching chess being played. Paris is the world center, and this cafe is the Paris centre for the finest skill at this game.
Denis Diderot
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There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.
Denis Diderot
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We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
Denis Diderot
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It is not the man who is beside himself, but he who is cool and collected,--who is master of his countenance, of his voice, of his actions, of his gestures, of every part of his play,--who can work upon others at his pleasure.
Denis Diderot