It is certainly no crime to depict the bizarre ideas that nature inspires.

The impossibility of outraging nature is the greatest anguish man can know.

Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.

How delicious to corrupt, to stifle all semblances of virtue and religion in that young heart!

If the objects who serve us feel ecstacy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired. The idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism.

What we are doing here is only the image of what we would like to do.

They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.