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.
The infant breaks his toy, bites his nurse’s breast, strangles his canary long before he is able to reason; cruelty is stamped in animals, in whom, as I think I have said, Nature’s laws are more emphatically to be read than in ourselves; cruelty exists amongst savages.
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 pleasure of the senses is always regulated in accordance with the imagination. Man can aspire to felicity only by serving all the whims of his imagination.
One must feel sorry for those who have strange tastes, but never insult them. Their wrong is Nature’s too; they are no more responsible for having come into the world with tendencies unlike ours than are we for being born bandy-legged or well-proportioned.
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!
Oh, Satan! one and unique God of my soul, inspire thou in me something yet more, present further perversions to my smoking heart, and then shalt thou see how I shall plunge myself into them all!
