“How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us.”

There you have Nature, there you have her intentions, there you have her scheme: a perpetual action and reaction, a host of vices, a host of virtues, in one word, a perfect equilibrium resulting from the equality of good and evil on earth.

What do I see there but a frail being forever unable to bring man to heel and force him to bend a knee. This creature, although emanated from him, dominates him, knows how to offend him and thereby merit torments eternally! What a weak fellow, this God!

The idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism.

What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act?

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

My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being,the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to.

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 than others.

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.

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

Love Is Stronger Than Pride

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

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

God strung up his own son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he would do to me.

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 medicines, when we feel the need.

I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt; I have vanquished, I have uprooted,

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

She leads us through their unknown world, her gift of language rising up like a delicate string of necessary lights.

To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.

Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism.

When a dream is born in you With a sudden clamorous pain, When you know the dream is true And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch You’ll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.

Be gentle, always delicate with every soul you meet, for every single morning you wake up, there is someone Wishing, silently and secretly, that they had not.

My love you can be both the flower, beautiful and delicate and the warrior, brave and strong.

When a dream is born in you With a sudden clamorous pain, When you know the dream is true And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch You’ll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.

Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.