In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.

Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.

Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders.

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.

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.

Conspiracy! Intrigue! A rapidly thickening plot! Add some bestiality and a lecherous priest and I'd say you have the beginnings of a beautiful novel.

The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.