“One must do violence to the object of one’s desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.”

Hence, I must recommend to you prompt exactness, submissiveness, and total self-abnegation that you be enabled to heed naught but our desires; let them be your laws, fly to do their bidding, anticipate them, cause them to be born.

All men are born free, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other.

If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws.

Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves.

There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.

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

What crimes would have been spared the world, if they had choked the first imbecile who thought of speaking of you.

Your service will be arduous, it will be painful and rigorous, and the slightest delinquencies will be requited immediately with corporal and afflicting punishments.

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

The rivers of blood are flowing beneath our feet… Ive been to hell, young man, youve only read about it.

The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable.

Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will.

Thread of their days without pity, and in the midst of life, without ever concerning themselves with this fatal moment, living as though they were to exist for ever, they disappear into the obscure cloud of immortality, uncertain of the fate which lies in store for them.

Fear not lest precautions and protective contrivances diminish your pleasure: mystery only adds thereto.

I assumed that everything must yield to me, that the entire universe had to flatter my whims, and that I had the right to satisfy them at will.

Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.

To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment.

The one infinite is perfect , in simplicity , of itself, absolutely, nor can aught be greater or better, This is the one Whole, God , universal Nature , occupying all space, of whom naught but infinity can give the perfect image or semblance.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.

Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.

There is no greater compliment to the Jews than the fact that the degree of their unpopularity is always the scientific measure of the cruelty and silliness of the regime under which they live.

My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.

To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?