 My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others! |
| Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed? |
| The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success. |
| The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man. |
| Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction. |
| One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush. |
| I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure. |
| All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one. |
| Sensual excess drives out pity in man. |
| The imagination is the spur of delights... all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise? |
| She had already allowed her delectable lover to pluck that flower which, so different from the rose to which it is nevertheless sometimes compared, has not the same faculty of being reborn each spring. |
| Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates. |
| "Sex" is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other. |
| There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author. |
| Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires. |
| One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants. |
| What is more immoral than war? |
| The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind. |
| It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others. |
| Man's natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes. |
