Quote

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.

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
Wings
Dried
Paper
Gathered
Color
Rainbow
Women
Pens
Butterfly
Colors
Describe
Humid
Dust
Dipped

More quotes by Denis Diderot

Image
The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
Denis Diderot
Image
Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?
Denis Diderot
Image
Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.
Denis Diderot
Image
There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
Denis Diderot
Image
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.
Denis Diderot
Image
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.
Denis Diderot
Image
We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
Denis Diderot
Image
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.
Denis Diderot
Image
There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
Denis Diderot
Image
We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
Denis Diderot
Image
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
Image
Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
Denis Diderot
Image
To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
Denis Diderot
Image
Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.
Denis Diderot
Image
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.
Denis Diderot
Image
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.
Denis Diderot
Image
A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.
Denis Diderot
Image
What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
Denis Diderot