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.

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.

For mortal men there is but one hell, and that is the folly and wickedness and spite of his fellows; but once his life is over, there’s an end to it: his annihilation is final...

All creatures are born isolated and have no need of one another.”

But to declare his wishes only in some unknown corner of Asia, to choose the most double-dealing and the most superstitious of peoples as followers, and the vilest, most ridiculous, and most roguish working man...

Humane sentiments are baseless, mad, and improper; they are incredibly feeble; never do they withstand the gainsaying passions, never do they resist bare necessity.

Murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime? If it is not, why make...

Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.

It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.

Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again...

Fuck! Is one expected to be a gentleman when one is stiff?

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses; whence it follows that religious principles bear upon nothing whatever and are not...

Self-interest lies behind all that men do, forming the important motive for all their actions; this rule has never deceived me

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

My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections; it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter is; and were it, I’d not...

…and above all, you should not think of writing as a way of earning your living. If you do, your work will smell of your poverty. It will be colored by your weakness and be...

She had already allowed her delectable lover to pluck that flower which, so different from the rose to which it is nevertheless sometimes compared, has not the same faculty of being reborn each spring.

The horror of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation.

The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.

Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.

Lycurgus, Numa, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, all these great rogues, all these great thought-tyrants, knew how to associate the divinities they fabricated with their own boundless ambition.

Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.

Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.

Wolves which batten upon lambs, lambs consumed by wolves, the strong who immolate the weak, the weak victims of the strong: there you have Nature, there you have her intentions, there you have her scheme:...

Lust’s passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.