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

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

I enjoyed the innocence of unhappiness and of helplessness; could I blame myself for a sin which attracted me, which flooded me with pleasure precisely to the extent it brought me to despair?

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.

We did not lack modesty—on the contrary—but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.

Not every woman is a prostitute, but prostitution is the natural apotheosis of the feminine attitude.

Only literature could reveal the process of breaking the law - without which the law would have no end - independently of the necessity to create order.