The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.
Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.
The pleasure of the senses is always regulated in accordance with the imagination. Man can aspire to felicity only by serving all the whims of his imagination.
Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.
The completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all.
It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called Man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life’s thorns