262 Quotes by Denis Diderot

Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

You have to make it happen.

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.

First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.

Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.

I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.

When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the heartsof others.

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.

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.