In an age that is utterly corrupt, the best policy is to do as others do.

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

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

Certain souls seem hard because they are capable of strong feelings, and they sometimes go to rather extreme lengths; their apparent unconcern and cruelty are but ways, known only to themselves, of feeling more strongly than others.

Crime is to the passions what nervous fluid is to life: it sustains them, it supplies their strength.

Your service will be arduous, it will be painful and rigorous, and the slightest delinquencies will be requited immediately with corporal and afflicting punishments; hence, I must recommend to you prompt exactness, submissiveness, and total self-abnegation that you be enabled to heed naught but our desires; let them be your laws, fly to do their bidding, anticipate them, cause them to be born.

Nature has endowed each of us with a capacity for kindly feelings: let us not squander them on others.