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

It is not the opinions or the vices of private individuals that are harmful to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures.

Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.

Behold, my love, behold all that I simultaneously do: scandal, seduction, bad example, incest, adultery, sodomy! Oh, Satan! one and unique God of my soul, inspire thou in me something yet more, present further perversions to my smoking heart, and then shalt thou see how I shall plunge myself into them all!

The law which attempts a man's life [capital punishment] is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime - for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold.

Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?

It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.