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
There are things I cant force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint. – Denis Diderot
We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us. – 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
Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent. I therefore show you only the best works; and when you are grounded in these, you will have a standard for the rest, which you will know how to value, without overrating them. – Johann von Goethe