Quote

We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.

Denis Diderot

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Drink
Lying
Truth
Gulp
Flatters
Swallow
Flattery
Drop
Bitter

More quotes by Denis Diderot

Image
What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.
Denis Diderot
Image
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
Denis Diderot
Image
Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
Denis Diderot
Image
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.
Denis Diderot
Image
There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
Tous les jours on couche avec des femmes qu'on n'aime pas, et l'on ne couche pas avec des femmes qu'on aime. Every day we sleep with women we do not love and don't sleep with the women we do love.
Denis Diderot
Image
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
Denis Diderot
Image
You have to make it happen.
Denis Diderot
Image
Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.
Denis Diderot
Image
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.
Denis Diderot
Image
If there were a reason for preferring the Christian religion to natural religion, it would be because the former offers us, on the nature of God and man, enlightenment that the latter lacks. Now, this is not at all the case for Christianity, instead of clarifying, gives rise to an infinite multitude of obscurities and difficulties.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
Denis Diderot
Image
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