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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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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
Small
Passions
Passion
Raise
Moral
Raises
Art
Creativity
Sublimity
Soul
Return
Infancy
Without
Becomes
Returns
Great
Virtue
Morals
Things
Either
Minded

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The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
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He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
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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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There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
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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.
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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
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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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Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
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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.
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Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
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The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
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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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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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To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
Denis Diderot
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How easy it is to tell tales!
Denis Diderot
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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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There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
Denis Diderot
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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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Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.
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Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.
Denis Diderot