The need to go astray, to be destroyed, is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.

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?

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.

The truth is paradoxical to the extent of being exactly contrary to the usual perception.

To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have welded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. In general, people savor the "pleasures of the flesh" only on the condition that they may be insipid.

Eroticism cannot be entirely revealed without poetry.

Thought does not ennoble us and neither does it differentiate humans from other animals.