Diderot effect quotes: the lines from the essay people repeat

Diderot’s essay is short, and a handful of its sentences do most of the work whenever someone explains the Diderot effect. Here are twelve of them, in the order they appear, each in our own translation from the 1875 French text, with a link to its chapter and a few words on what it says to someone about to buy something new.

One thing you will not find is a definition. Diderot never used the phrase “Diderot effect.” When people quote one, they are usually paraphrasing the anthropologist Grant McCracken, who in 1988 described the effect as a force that pushes a person to keep their possessions culturally consistent. The essay is the story; the definition came two centuries later.

The old gown and the new

Why did I not keep it? It was made for me, and I was made for it.

From chapter 1. The essay opens with regret, not with desire. The old gown was worn in, shaped to its owner and good at its job. Before replacing something that fits your life, ask what the fit is worth, because it rarely comes back with the replacement.

I was the absolute master of my old dressing gown; I have become the slave of the new one.

From chapter 1. The line everyone quotes, and the turn the whole essay depends on. A possession that has to be protected starts giving orders. If a purchase will make you nervous to use it, you are buying a responsibility along with it.

Curse the man who invented the art of making common cloth precious by dyeing it scarlet.

From chapter 1. The new gown is not made of anything special; the color is what makes it precious. Much of what we pay extra for works the same way: the label, the finish, the shade of the season. Ask what you would pay for the plain cloth underneath.

A study out of tune

My friends, keep your old friends. My friends, beware the touch of wealth. Let my example teach you. Poverty has its freedoms; opulence has its constraints.

From chapter 2. The old friends are his old things. Owning less means fewer things to guard, match and maintain; owning more brings obligations the price tag never mentions.

Everything is out of tune. No more harmony, no more unity, no more beauty.

From chapter 2. The heart of the essay. A poor room can be harmonious, and a single fine object can ruin the harmony. When a new purchase makes your home feel wrong, the problem is often the purchase, not the home.

That is what my home would have looked like, had the imperious scarlet not tuned everything to its own pitch.

From chapter 2. Diderot admits who set the standard: the newest, most expensive thing in the room. Every later purchase was tuned to it. Decide your standard before the newcomer arrives, or it will decide for you.

The chain, piece by piece

Fatal instinct for what goes together. Delicate and ruinous tact, sublime taste that changes, that moves, that builds up and knocks down; that empties fathers’ strongboxes and leaves daughters without dowries and sons without schooling.

From chapter 3. Diderot names the force behind the chain, and it is not greed. It is taste: the wish for things to go together. Good taste is a fine thing to have and an expensive thing to obey without a budget.

There was an empty corner beside my window. The corner asked for a writing cabinet, and it got one.

From chapter 3. The funniest line in the essay, and the most exact. Empty space starts to feel like a request. A gap is not a need; it can stay empty.

The rug, the prayer and the painting

I see my old rag rug. It reminds me of where I began, and pride stops at the threshold of my heart.

From chapter 4. The one thing Diderot keeps from his old life, kept on purpose. Holding on to an old item beside the new ones is a cheap and effective check on a chain.

I give everything up to you. Take it all back. Yes, all of it, except the Vernet.

From chapter 4. Every clear-out has an exception, and the exception always has a reason. It is worth knowing which of your things is your Vernet before you start.

The painter has humbled the philosopher.

From chapter 5. His guests now come to see the painting, not to hear him. When what you own becomes the most interesting thing about you, it has started to cost you something money cannot measure.

I have Laïs, but Laïs does not have me.

From chapter 6. Diderot borrows an old saying of the philosopher Aristippus for his painting. It is the test the whole essay sets: do you own the thing, or does it own you? He answers yes to the first after eight pages that suggest the second.

Using these lines

Lines credited to Diderot online often blend several sentences into one, or come from older translations that soften or expand the French. The line people quote most, about the master and the slave, closes the second paragraph of the essay. The line about harmony and unity is a paragraph of its own, ten words long in French. If you quote the essay, the chapter link is a better citation than a quote site.

Every passage on this page links to its chapter, where you can read it in context with notes and the French original. For the story behind the essay, see where the Diderot effect comes from; for the idea itself, start at the hub page.