“So much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . .”

Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?

If it is not, why make laws for its punishment? And if it is, by what barbarous logic do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime?

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.

I write what I see, the endless procession to the guillotine. Were all lined up, waiting for the crunch of the blade…

We devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate. The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold.

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

Beauty is a simple thing; ugliness is the exceptional thing. And fiery imaginations, no doubt, always prefer the extraordinary thing to the simple thing.

Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof it is composed; for, if they one time protect the individual, they hinder, trouble, fetter him for three quarters of his life.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

How delicious to corrupt, to stifle all semblances of virtue and religion in that young heart!

To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.

The theory that the man who raises corn does a more important piece of work than the woman who makes it into bread is absurd.

As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

the world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. it quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it.

Adultery is responsible for breaking up more marriages, but do we put that in the Constitution? It’s absurd.

in their nerve ends, not the facts of life but the facts of death and violence: absurd, random, gratuitous, unjustified, and inescapably part of the society we have created.

To give a price to an artwork, no matter how high or low, is always absurd. It’s not something that can be measured by money or by certain numbers.

When I was a kid, I read comics. But when I saw how funny it was, and how wonderfully absurd, I said, “You know, I gotta do this.”