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 DiderotIn order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.
Denis DiderotLa 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 DiderotLe public ne sait pas toujours de sirer le vrai. Thepublicdoesnot alwaysknowhow todesirethetruth.
Denis DiderotMes pense es sont mes catins. My thoughts are my prostitutes.
Denis DiderotRien ne dissemble plus de lui que lui-me" me. Nothing resembles him less than himself.
Denis DiderotFrom fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
Denis DiderotIf you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.
Denis DiderotWhat is this world of ours? A complex entity subject to sudden changes which all indicate a tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings which follow one another, assert themselves and disappear; a fleeting symmetry; a momentary order.
Denis DiderotWhen 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 DiderotWatch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.
Denis DiderotThe 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 DiderotI have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.
Denis DiderotEvil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
Denis DiderotThere is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
Denis DiderotI believe in God, although I live very happily with atheists... It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.
Denis DiderotThere are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
Denis DiderotWe are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures … But what provokes me is that only their adverse side is considered … and yet 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 DiderotTo prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
Denis DiderotTo 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 DiderotAucun homme n'a recu de la nature le droit de commander aux autres. La liberté est un présent du ciel, et chaque individu de la meme espèce a le droit d'en jouir aussitòt qu'il jouit de la raison.
Denis DiderotLa reconnaissance est un fardeau, et tout fardeau est fait pour être secoué.
Denis DiderotAll abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
Denis DiderotWe are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.
Denis DiderotÉgaré dans une forêt immense pendant la nuit, je n’ai qu’une petite lumière pour me conduire. Survient un inconnu qui me dit:;: Mon ami, souffle ta bougie pour mieux trouver ton chemin. Cet inconnu est un théologien. No VIII
Denis DiderotThe 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, dicebox in hand, shaking the dice.
Denis DiderotAlthough 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.
Denis DiderotIf I had believed him, everything would have been turned upside down... all would have been turned topsy-turvy to make room for impractical theories.
Denis DiderotIf ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the "enthusiasm for truth and justice" using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.
Denis Diderot