Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?

Crime is to the passions what nervous fluid is to life: it sustains them, it supplies their strength.

Fear not lest precautions and protective contrivances diminish your pleasure: mystery only adds thereto.

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.

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.

Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!