We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves. – Denis Diderot
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go. – Denis Diderot
Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control. – Denis Diderot
Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common. – Denis Diderot
Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence. – Henry Fuseli