What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!

Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.

There comes a moment during which almost every girl or boy falls into melancholy; they are tormented by a vague inquietude which rests on everything and finds nothing to calm it. They seek solitude; they weep; the silence to be found in cloister attracts them: the image of peace that seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish.

The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.