Any enjoyment is weakened when shared.

There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.

Were he supreme, were he mighty, were he just, were he good, this God you tell me about, would it be through enigmas and buffooneries he would wish to teach me to serve and know him?

They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.

In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration; the most extraordinary, the most bizarre acts, those which most arrantly seem to conflict with every law, every human institution... even those that are not frightful, and there is not one amongst them all that cannot be demonstrated within the boundaries of nature.

We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.

It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.