Every man--I know this--turns weak, pliant, ridiculous as soon as he's in love.

You cannot deny that love lasts for only a brief moment, uniting two beings as a single being that is capable of only one thought, one sensation, one will.

Be then my slave, and know what it means to be delivered into the hands of a woman.

Love knows no virtue, no profit; it loves and forgives and suffers everything, because it must. It is not our judgment that leads us; it is neither the advantages nor the faults which we discover, that make us abandon ourselves, or that repel us. It is a sweet, soft, enigmatic power that drives us on. We cease to think, to feel, to will; we let ourselves be carried away by it, and ask not whither?

If I can't enjoy the full and total happiness of love, then I want to drain its torments, its tortures to the dregs; then I want the woman I love to mistreat me, betray me, and the more cruelly the better. That too is a pleasure.

A slap in the face is more effective than ten lectures. It makes you understand very quickly.

Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will paint her, and go mad.