artbleed2

Description: Denis Diderot: Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

Description: Denis Diderot: Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

Description: Denis Diderot: 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!

Description: Denis Diderot quote: There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

Description: Denis Diderot: If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: Distance is a great promoter of admiration!

Description: Denis Diderot quote: To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!

Description: Denis Diderot quote: Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: La puissance qui s'acquiert par la violence n'est qu'une usurpation, et ne dure qu'autant que la force de celui qui commande l'emporte sur celle de ceux qui obéissent.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: [L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes...

Description: Denis Diderot quote: We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: “The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.”

Description: Denis Diderot quote: There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

Description: Denis Diderot: One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: On doit exiger de moi que je cherche la vérité, mais non que je la trouve.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: Aucun 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.

Description: Denis Diderot quote: Skepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.

Description: Émile Zola quote: When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another’s lips. Lovers are made by a kiss.

Description: Émile Zola quote: Does anyone kill as the result of reasoning? People only kill by an impulse of blood and nerves—the necessity to live, the joy of being strong.

Description: Émile Zola quote: Souffle la chandelle, je n’ai pas besoin de voir la couleur de mes idées.

Description: Émile Zola quote: Les gouvernements suspectent la littérature parce qu'elle est une force qui leur échappe.

Description: Émile Zola quote: Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.

Description: Émile Zola quote: If the earth was restful and good to those who loved it, the villagers contaminating it like vermin, those human insects battening on it's flesh, were enough to disgrace it and blight any approach to it.

Description: Émile Zola quote: Only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play.

Description: Émile Zola quote: Ah! bonne terre, prends-moi, toi qui es la mère commune, l'unique source de la vie! toi l'éternelle, l'immortelle, où circule l'âme du monde, cette sève épandue jusque dans les pierres, et qui fait des arbres nos grands frères immobiles! ... Oui, je veux me perdre en toi, c'est toi que je sens là, sous mes membres, m'étreignant et m'enflammant, c'est toi seule qui seras dans mon oeuvre comme la force première, le moyen et le but, l'arche immense, où toutes les choses s'animent du souffle de tous les êtres!

Description: Émile Zola quote: "Oh, beneficent earth, take me unto thee, thou who art our common mother, our only source of life! thou the eternal, the immortal one, in whom circulates the soul of the world, the sap that spreads even into the stones, and makes the trees themselves our big, motionless brothers! Yes, I wish to lose myself in thee; it is thou that I feel beneath my limbs, clasping and inflaming me; thou alone shalt appear in my work as the primary force, the means and the end, the immense ark in which everything becomes animated with the breath of every being!"

Description: Émile Zola quote: No, the only good was to be found in non-existence or, if one had to exist, in being a tree, a stone, or lower still, a grain of sand, for that cannot bleed under the heel of every passer-by.

Description: Émile Zola quote: How the thought of meeting lost loved ones would sweeten one’s last moments, how eagerly would one embrace them, and what bliss to live together once more in immortality! He suffered agonies when he considered religion’s charitable lie, which compassionately conceals the terrible truth from feeble creatures. No, everything finished at death, nothing that we had loved was ever reborn, our farewells were for ever. For ever! For ever! That was the dreadful thought that carried his mind hurtling down abysses of emptiness.

Description: Émile Zola quote: Et je n’ai pour moi que l’idée, un idéal de vérité et de justice. Et je suis bien tranquille, je vaincrai. Je n’ai pas voulu que mon pays restât dans le mensonge et dans l’injustice. On peut me frapper ici. Un jour, la France me remerciera d’avoir aider à sauver son honneur.

Description: Émile Zola quote: “Paris flared — Paris, which the divine sun had sown with light, and where in glory waved the great future harvest of Truth and of Justice.”

Description: Émile Zola quote: Antagonism breeds extremism, and it was turning one into the zealous revolutionary and the other into an excessive advocate of caution, taking them beyond what they really thought and forcing them to adopt positions of which they then became prisoners.

Description: Émile Zola quote: When a man was honest in his dealings, you could forgive him the rest.