'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.

If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finish, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.

Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace

Certain souls may seem harsh to others, but it is just a way, beknownst only to them, of caring and feeling more deeply.

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.