Whatever dressing one gives to mushrooms, to whatever sauces our Apiciuses put them, they are not really good but to be sent back to the dungheap where they are born.
Denis DiderotYou can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.
Denis DiderotShakespeare's fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.
Denis DiderotThere is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.
Denis DiderotWhat is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days.
Denis Diderot