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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.

Denis Diderot

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Denis Diderot
Age: 70 †
Born: 1713
Born: October 5
Died: 1784
Died: July 31
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Art Critic
Art Theorist
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Encyclopédistes
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Theorist
Lumières
Diderot
Weakens
Morals
Poetic
Civilized
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Moral
Less
Sont
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More quotes by Denis Diderot

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No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.
Denis Diderot
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The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
Denis Diderot
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The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.
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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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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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
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Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
Denis Diderot
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Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
Denis Diderot
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Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
Denis Diderot
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How easy it is to tell tales!
Denis Diderot
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Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
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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You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.
Denis Diderot
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Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
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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The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.
Denis Diderot
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Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.
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.
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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One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself.
Denis Diderot