The imagination is the spur of delights… all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination...

How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in...

…those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you may be sure, from the barbarous pleasure of making others as guilty and unhappy as they are. They...

¡Creedlo, ciudadanos, aquel a quien la espada material de las leyes no detiene tampoco se detendrá por el temor moral de los suplicios del infierno, de los que se burla desde su infancia!. En una...

True felicity lies only in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.

We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.

The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable.

Last night you were, unhinged. You were like some desperate, howling demon. You frightened me . . . Do it again.

Hope is the most sensitive part of a poor wretch’s soul; whoever raises it only to torment him is behaving like the executioners in Hell who, they say, incessantly renew old wounds and concentrate their...

What is more immoral than war?

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!

Ah, EugTnie, have done with virtues! Among the sacrifices that can be made to those counterfeit divinities, is there one worth an instant of the pleasures one tastes in outraging them?

There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.

The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man.

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.

Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing. Pregnancies are damaging to health, spoil the figure, wither the charms, and it’s the cloud of uncertainty forever hanging over these events that darkens a husband’s...

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...

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

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.

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.

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...

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 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...

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

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...

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...

”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.

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.

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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