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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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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
Needs
Barbarous
Something
Savage
Savages
Chose
Grand
Scale
Scales
Poetry

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What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
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To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.
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The world is the house of the strong.
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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.
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Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.
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Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
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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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You have to make it happen.
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To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.
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Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
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When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz , one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
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Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
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Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.
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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.
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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.
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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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Le public ne sait pas toujours de sirer le vrai. Thepublicdoesnot alwaysknowhow todesirethetruth.
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How easy it is to tell tales!
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All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.
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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