I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt; I have vanquished, I have uprooted, I have destroyed everything in my heart that might have interfered with my pleasure.

There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship.

Certain souls may seem harsh to others, but it is just a way, beknownst only to them, of caring and feeling more deeply.

I assumed that everything must yield to me, that the entire universe had to flatter my whims, and that I had the right to satisfy them at will.

Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.

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

Man's natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes.