Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?

Woman’s destiny is to be wanton, like the bitch, the she-wolf; she must belong to all who claim her.

Evil is a moral entity and not a created one, an eternal and not a perishable entity: it existed before the world; it constituted the monstrous, the execrable being who was also to fashion such...

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.

I want to be the victim of his errors.

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...

One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.

Let us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy…Conscience is not the voice of Nature but only the voice of prejudice.

Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for...

In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration; the most extraordinary, the most bizarre acts, those which most arrantly seem to conflict with every law, every human institution… even...

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

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

Behold, my love, behold all that I simultaneously do: scandal, seduction, bad example, incest, adultery, sodomy! Oh, Satan! one and unique God of my soul, inspire thou in me something yet more, present further perversions...

Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the two, in the first instance I should...

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...

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws...

It is certain that stealing nourishes courage, strength, skill, tact, in a word, all the virtues useful to a republican system and consequently to our own. Lay partiality aside, and answer me: is theft, whose...

There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.

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.

”Sex” is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.

It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.

It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that that unfortunate individual called man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering...

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost / the most legitimate / passion nature has bred into...

Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?

When a man loves a woman, as our old troubadours used to say, even if he has heard or seen something that puts his beloved in a bad light, he should believe neither his ears...

The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.

So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we...

La imaginación es el aguijón de los placeres; en los de esta especie, lo regula todo, es el móvil de todo; ahora bien, ,no se goza por ella?,No es de ella de la que proceden...

Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he...

Man’s natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have...

Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.

No lover, if he be of good faith, and sincere, will deny he would prefer to see his mistress dead than unfaithful.

One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.

Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and...

Si hay algo extravagante en el mundo es ver a los hombres, que no conocen a su dios y lo que ese dios pueda exigir más que según sus limitadas ideas, querer, sin embargo, decidir...

How delicious are these implements of torture.

‘Sex” is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.

…that tender compunction of the honest-minded, so different from the hateful intoxication of criminals…

Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature’s mandates.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

Sensual excess drives out pity in man.

Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by...

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace

Franval, who was now absolutely at ease, thought on,y of upsetting others; he behaved in his vindictive, unruly, impetuous way when he was disturbed; he desired his own tranquility again at any price, and in...

Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves; all men are born free, all have equal...

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself;...

In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.

Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving...

Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.