Denis Diderot quotes - Page : 7

" What 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. " # Beauty # Change # Simplicity

" Il y a un peu de testicule au fond de nos sentiments les plus sublimes et de notre tendresse la plus épurée " # Love # Kindness # Industry

" L'esprit de l'escalier "

" It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none. " # Love # Wit # Friends and Friendship

" Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land. " # Genius # Character # Love

" 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. " # Beauty # Wisdom # Intelligence and Intellectuals

" How old the world is! I walk between two eternities... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don’t want to die! " # Death and Dying # Eternity # Love

" Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois. " # Love

" Variant: Et des boyaux du dernier prêtre Serrons le cou du dernier roi. " # Civilization

" The more man ascends through the past, and the more he launches into the future, the greater he will be, and all these philosophers and ministers and truth-telling men who have fallen victims to the stupidity of nations, the atrocities of priests, the fury of tyrants, what consolation was left for them in death? This: That prejudice would pass, and that posterity would pour out the vial of ignominy upon their enemies. O Posterity! Holy and sacred stay of the unhappy and the oppressed; thou who art just, thou who art incorruptible, thou who findest the good man, who unmaskest the hypocrite, who breakest down the tyrant, may thy sure faith, thy consoling faith never, never abandon me! " # Excellence # Death and Dying # Philosophers and Philosophy