Cats exercise... a magic influence upon highly developed men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces of the animal kingdom, these adorable, scintillating electric batteries have been the favorite animal of a Mohammed, Cardinal Richlieu, Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland.

I love her passionately with a morbid intensity; madly as one can only love a woman who never responds to our love with anything but an eternally uniform, eternally calm, stony smile.

Pleasure alone makes existence worthwhile. A pleasure-seeker has a difficult time parting from life.

You know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors.

I imagine that the goddess of Love has come down from Olympus to visit a mortal. So as not to die of cold in this modern world of ours, she wraps her sublime body in great heavy furs and warms her feet on the prostrate body of her lover. I imagine the favorite of this beautiful despot, who is whipped when his mistress grows tired of kissing him, and whose love only grows more intense the more he is trampled underfoot. I shall call the picture "Venus in Furs

Desire followed the glance, pleasure followed desire

Love knows no virtue, no merit; it loves and forgives and tolerates everything because it must. We are not guided by reason.