Denis Diderot Quotes

Tout a son vrai loyer dans ce monde. Il y a deux procureurs généraux, l'un à votre porte qui châtie les délits contre la société; la nature est l'autre. Celle-ci connaît de tous les vices qui échappent aux lois.

Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.

Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in the future years to come.

Rendre la vertu aimable, le vice odieux, le ridicule saillant. Voilà le projet de tout homme qui prend la plume, le pinceau et le ciseau.

We do not know nature; causes hidden in her breast might have produced everything. In your turn, observe the polyp of Trembley: does it not contain in itself the causes which bring about regeneration? Why then would it be absurd to think that there are physical causes by reason of which everything has been made, and to which the whole chain of this vast universe is so necessarily bound and held that, nothing which happens, could have failed to happen,—causes, of which we are so invincibly ignorant that we have had recourse to a God, who, as some aver, is not so much as a logical entity? Thus to destroy chance is not to prove the existence of a supreme being, since there may be some other thing which is neither chance nor God—I mean, nature. It follows that the study of nature can make only unbelievers; and the way of thinking of all its more successful investigators proves this.

إيه لو كنتُ أُجيد الكلام مثلما أجيد التفكير! لكنه كان مكتوباً فوق أن تكون الأشياء في رأسي ، وأن لا تأتي الكلمات.

Au fost lăudaţi mult mai mult oamenii ocupaţi a ne face să credem că suntem fericiţi, decât oamenii ocupaţi a ne face să fim fericiţi cu adevărat. Ce ciudăţenie în judecăţile noastre! Pretindem ca fiecare să facă ceva folositor, dar îi dispreţuim pe oamenii folositori.

I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism.

Shakespeare’s fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.

أليس شيئاً مزعجاً! فهم يذمّون الحياةَ من الصصبح حتى المساء، ولا يستطيعون عقد العزم على مغادرتها!
أيكون السبب أن الحياة الراهنة ليست في مجملها بالشيء الرديء ، أم أنهم يخشون حياة قادمة أسوأ منها

Yo os haría una pregunta, señor ¿por qué, entre todas ls ideas funestas que pasan por la cabeza de una religiosa desesperada, no está la de pegarle fuego a la casa?

There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.

The worst of it is how need forces you into certain postures. The man in need doesn’t walk like other people; he jumps, he crawls, he contorts himself, he drags himself along; he spends his life in positions that he has had to take up and maintain.

But how do you know that the whole world hasn't its meninges, or that there isn't a big or little spider living in some corner of space with threads extending everywhere?

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others