His father, who was a man of substance, gave him his choice between medicine and law.

Law he refused because he did not choose to spend his days in doing other people's business; and medicine, because he had no turn for killing.

His father resolutely declined to let him have more money on these terms, and Diderot was thrown on his wits.
The man of letters shortly before the middle of the century was as much an outcast and a beggar in Paris as he was in London.

Voltaire, Gray, and Richardson were perhaps the only three conspicuous writers of the time, who had never known what it was to want a meal or to go without a shirt.

But then none of the three depended on his pen for his livelihood.