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

Behold, my love, behold all that I simultaneously do: scandal, seduction, bad example, incest, adultery, sodomy! Oh, Satan! one and unique God of my soul, inspire thou in me something yet more, present further perversions to my smoking heart, and then shalt thou see how I shall plunge myself into them all!

Let us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy...Conscience is not the voice of Nature but only the voice of prejudice.

Murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime? If it is not, why make laws for its punishment? And if it is, by what barbarous logic do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime?

Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.

One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.

The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.