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My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.

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
Blow
Friend
Order
Find
Way
Candle
Clearly

More quotes by Denis Diderot

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Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.
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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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There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
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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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The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre
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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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When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.
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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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
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The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.
Denis Diderot
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And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
Denis Diderot
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I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself. My ideas are my harlots.
Denis Diderot
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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, dice box in hand, shaking the dice.
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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A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it... Skepticism is the first step toward truth.
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 philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
Denis Diderot
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Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
Denis Diderot
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Only the bad man is alone.
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