Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act? That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you...every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates.

Now I beg of you to tell me whether I must love a human being simply because he exists or resembles me and whether for those reasons alone I must suddenly prefer him to myself?

Lycurgus, Numa, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, all these great rogues, all these great thought-tyrants, knew how to associate the divinities they fabricated with their own boundless ambition.

The impossibility of outraging nature is the greatest anguish man can know.

The primary and most beautiful of nature's qualities is motion

Can we become other than what we are?