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

You perhaps now know that desire reduces us to pulp.

Eroticism differs from animal sexuality in that human sexuality is limited by taboos and the domain of eroticism is that of the transgression of these taboos. Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself.

In what will survive me I am in harmony with my annihilation.

[F]or academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.

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

Indeed, the direction of the future is only there in order to elude us.