I am about to put foward some major ideas; they will be heard and pondered. If not all of them please, surely a few will; in some sort, then, I shall have contributed to the progress of our age, and shall be content.

It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women.

Happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime.

Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.

It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.

Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil.

What we are doing here is only the image of what we would like to do.