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The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre

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
Rise
Inspire
Produce
Gives
Inspires
Better
Bizarre
Giving
Produces
Good
Followed
Excellent

More quotes by 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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Tous les jours on couche avec des femmes qu'on n'aime pas, et l'on ne couche pas avec des femmes qu'on aime. Every day we sleep with women we do not love and don't sleep with the women we do love.
Denis Diderot
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We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
Denis Diderot
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What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
Denis Diderot
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I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
Denis Diderot
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What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.
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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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
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Only the bad man is alone.
Denis Diderot
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There are cats and cats.
Denis Diderot
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
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.
Denis Diderot
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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
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The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.
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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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
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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.
Denis Diderot
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Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
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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The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
Denis Diderot