The warrior's nobility is like a prostitute's smile, the truth of which is self-interest.

Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death

The emotional element which gives an obsessive value to communal existence is death.

Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur and its reality in ecstasy and in ecstatic love.

To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have welded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. In general, people savor the "pleasures of the flesh" only on the condition that they may be insipid.

I teach the art of turning anguish into delight.

The warrior's nobility is like a prostitute's smile, the truth of which is self-interest.