We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the dual nature of passions, suggesting they can lead to both suffering and joy.
Denis Diderot emphasizes the complexity of human passions, arguing that while people often criticize and blame passions for their troubles and afflictions, it is important to recognize that these same passions are also the wellspring of life's pleasures and joys. This dual perspective invites reflection on the balance of human emotions and the understanding that passion can encompass both positive and negative experiences.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing our emotions, I might say, 'Remember, as Diderot noted, passions are the source of both our suffering and our joy.'
The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
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?
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think...of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the 'right' notes and the 'wrong' ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.
The cooperative, loving side of existence goes hand in hand with coping and power, but neither the one nor the other can be neglected if life is to be gratifying.
I was becoming post-ideological.
The past isn't over. It isn't even past.
It is indolence... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.
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