I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.

The sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space.

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

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

Sacrifice is nothing other than the production of sacred things.

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.

[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.