Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates.

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

At all times, in every century, every age, there has been such a connection between despotism and religion that it is infinitely apparent and demonstrated a thousand times over, that in destroying one, the other must be undermined, for the simple reason that the first will always put the law into the service of the second.

Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves; all men are born free, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other.

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.

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

Here am I: at one stroke incestuous, adulteress, sodomite, and all that in a girl who only lost her maidenhead today! What progress, my friends with what rapidity I advance along the thorny road of vice!