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

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

I teach the art of turning anguish into delight.

The sacred demands the violation of what is normally the object of terrified respect.

The owl flies, in the moonlight, over a field where the wounded cry out. Like the owl, I fly in the night over my own misfortune.

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.

You perhaps now know that desire reduces us to pulp.