“According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.”

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 be mad to believe in him, and in the second a fool.

That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you…every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates.

Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing.

My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections; it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter it; and were it, I’d not do so.

Conspiracy! Intrigue! A rapidly thickening plot! Add some bestiality and a lecherous priest and I’d say you have the beginnings of a beautiful novel.

Behold, my love, behold all that I simultaneously do: scandal, seduction, bad example, incest, adultery, sodomy!

Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.

Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.

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

When I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general corruption or a distubance so formal that even after my death its effects would still be felt.

It is not the opinions or the vices of private individuals that are harmful to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures.

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 are silent that the greatest actions appear.

Conscience is not the voice of Nature but only the voice of prejudice.

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 obliged to display in public.

Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.

Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.

Another man understands that nature of the river is to change constantly, regardless of his likes and dislikes, and therefore he does not suffer.

For this occurs just as clay is first molded into one, then shaped into another form, for the Devil is a potter and his witches are but clay.

We need to develop meditation so that the understanding arises clearly within oneself. It is not the case that merely by listening to another’s explanation our defilements will disappear.

The forms of the world have their place, but in another way, there is nothing there. To be free, we need to respect both of these truths.

I think the pearls – one is a necklace, and another you have five hundred pounds of pearls, which may be one million pearls in a bowl – really show a kind of [society] condition.

If you think that people should be nice to one another, then by all means be nice. But when you project that belief onto the people and the world around you as if it were an objective reality, or worse still.

Another one is Eric Clapton. Another one is Phil Collins. Eminem, Kanye West I like all those people.

There are still many great surviving talents: Stevie Winwood. Another great talent is Stevie Wonder.