“Why do you complain of your fate when you could so easily change it?”

One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.

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!

Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.

Don’t you be so nice to me; I fall in love so easily.

Some pain shouldn’t be wished away so easily. It has to be dealt with, even embraced.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

For he who loses all often easily loses himself.

I could easily have decided that life was cruel, that being black meant everything was stacked against me.