Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.

The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life's intimacy does not reveal it's dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out.

The sovereign being is burdened with a servitude that crushes him, and the condition of free men is deliberate servility.

By the care she lavishes on her toilet, by the concern she has for her beauty set off by her adornment, a woman regards herself as an object always trying to attract men's attention.

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit; to become delightful, happiness must be tainted with poison.

It seems impossible, in fact, to judge the eye using any word other than seductive, since nothing is more attractive in the bodies of animals and men. But extreme seductiveness is probably at the boundary of horror.

Literature ... is the rediscovery of childhood.