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

Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses . . .

The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.

It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women.

The debility to which Nature condemned women incontestably proves that her design is for man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, to exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse.

What is more immoral than war?

If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.