If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that while minor wrongdoings are disdainful, there is a certain respect that can be given to those who commit grander acts of wickedness.
Denis Diderot reflects on the nature of wickedness, proposing that while society tends to scorn small-time criminals, there exists a fascination or even a form of respect for those who engage in more significant, audacious crimes. This distinction raises questions about morality, ethics, and the complexity of human behavior, highlighting how society’s judgments can vary based on the magnitude of wrongdoing.
In practice
In a literary analysis of Diderot's work, this quote could be used to explore themes of morality and respect.
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.
We must have done something very wicked before we were born, or else we must be going to be very happy indeed when we are dead, for God to let this life have all the tortures of expiation and all the sorrows of an ordeal.
As precious as life itself is our heritage of individual freedom, for man's free agency is a God-given gift.
Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don't have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.
So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.
The resurrection is a fact better attested than any event recorded in any history, whether ancient or modern.
What delights, what pleasures does your life offer you that outweigh the raptures of death?
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