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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.
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
Wings
Dried
Paper
Gathered
Color
Rainbow
Women
Pens
Butterfly
Colors
Describe
Humid
Dust
Dipped
More quotes by Denis Diderot
If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.
Denis Diderot
Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.
Denis Diderot
A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.
Denis Diderot
Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.
Denis Diderot
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
When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.
Denis Diderot
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
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
One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it
Denis Diderot
You have to make it happen.
Denis Diderot
Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
Denis Diderot
Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
Denis Diderot
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
We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
Denis Diderot
The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.
Denis Diderot
The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.
Denis Diderot
The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.
Denis Diderot
But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!
Denis Diderot
Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
Denis Diderot
And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, For want of a rope, to strangle kings.
Denis Diderot
