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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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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
Lucky
Asylums
Stupid
Wisest
Crazy
Drive
Woman
Mets
Beautiful
Fit
Enough
Ugly
Never
Intelligent
Among
Asylum

More quotes by Denis Diderot

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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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How easy it is to tell tales!
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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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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
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Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
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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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It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
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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.
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In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
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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.
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What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
Denis Diderot
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You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
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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Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?
Denis Diderot
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Le public ne sait pas toujours de sirer le vrai. Thepublicdoesnot alwaysknowhow todesirethetruth.
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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Only the bad man is alone.
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Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
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.
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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