The degradation which characterizes the state into which you plunge him by punishing him pleases, amuses, and delights him. Deep down he enjoys having gone so far as to deserve being treated in such a way.

Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need.

There are thorns everywhere, but along the path of vice, roses bloom above them.

There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.

The completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all.

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

Evil is... a moral entity and not a created one, an eternal and not a perishable entity: it existed before the world; it constituted the monstrous, the execrable being who was also to fashion such a hideous world. It will hence exist after the creatures which people this world