People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sale there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.

Out of love, women become entirely what it is that they are in the imaginations of the men who love them.

Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed.

There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.

We pay dearly for immortality: we die for it more than once during our lifetimes.

Weariness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity-and finally liberty is bestowed by sleep.

Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.