What you call disorder is nothing else than one of the laws of the order you comprehend not and which you have erroneously named disorder because its effects, though good for Nature, run counter to your convenience or jar your opinions.

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

Now I beg of you to tell me whether I must love a human being simply because he exists or resembles me and whether for those reasons alone I must suddenly prefer him to myself?

Virtue can procure only an imaginary happiness; true felicity lies only in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.

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.

God strung up his own son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he would do to me.

No kind of sensation is keener and more active than that of pain its impressions are unmistakable.