Denis Diderot Quotes - Page 8

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• En ge ne ral, plus un peuple est civilise , poli, moins ses moeurs sont poe tiques; tout s'affaiblit en s'adoucissant. Ingeneral, themore civilized and refinedthepeople, the less poetic are its morals; everything weakens as it mellows.

  Denis Diderot

  Moral, Poetic, Plus

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• If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant's reasoning to the grown man's passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.

  Denis Diderot

  Mother, Father, Passion

  "Rameau's Nephew". Book by Denis Diderot, 1805.

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• Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.

  Denis Diderot

  Distance, Sky, Towers

  John Hope Mason, Denis Diderot (1982). “The irresistible Diderot”

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• Il ne faut point donner d'esprit a' ses personnages; mais savoir les placer dans des circonstances qui leur en donnent. You should not give wit to your characters, but know instead how to put them in situations which will make them witty.

  Denis Diderot

  Witty, Character, Giving

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• The fact is that she was terribly undressed and I was extremely undressed too. The fact is that I still had my hand where she didn't have anything and she had hers where the same wasn't quite true of me. The fact is that I found myself underneath her and consequently she found herself on top of me.

  Denis Diderot

  Hands, Facts, Found

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• If the weather is too cold or rainy, I take shelter in the Regence Cafe, where I entertain myself by watching chess being played. Paris is the world center, and this cafe is the Paris centre for the finest skill at this game.

  Denis Diderot

  Learning, Games, Skills

  Denis Diderot, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Henry Bowen (2001). “Rameau's Nephew and Other Works”, p.8, Hackett Publishing

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• If 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

  Justice, Phrases, Enthusiasm

  Denis Diderot (1963). “Diderot, interpreter of nature: selected writings”

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• This root [the potato], no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticized with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and laborers?

  Denis Diderot

  Men, Vegetables, Roots

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• There are cats and cats.

  Denis Diderot

  Cat

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• The first promise exchanged by two beings of flesh was at the foot of a rock that was crumbling into dust; they took as witness for their constancy a sky that is not the same for a single instant; everything changed in them and around them, and they believed their hearts free of vicissitudes. O children! always children!

  Denis Diderot

  Love, Change, Time

  "Jacques the Fatalist". Book by Denis Diderot, 1796.

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• All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.

  Denis Diderot

  Science, Technology, Study

  "D'Alembert's Dream". Book by Denis Diderot, 1830.

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• The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for its shape and comfort.

  Denis Diderot

  Animal, Matter, Comfort

  Denis Diderot (1966). “Selected Writings”, New York : Macmillan

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