“Now I beg of you to tell me whether I must love a human being simply because he exists or resembles me and whether for those reasons alone I must suddenly prefer him to myself?”

What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act?

Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses . . .

My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being,the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to.

Certain souls seem hard because they are capable of strong feelings, and they sometimes go to rather extreme lengths; their apparent unconcern and cruelty are but ways, known only to themselves, of feeling more strongly than others.

We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

Love Is Stronger Than Pride

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.

God strung up his own son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he would do to me.

Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need.

I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt; I have vanquished, I have uprooted,

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.

Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.

In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration.

Even those that are not frightful, and there is not one amongst them all that cannot be demonstrated within the boundaries of nature.

I beg the reader not to go in search of messages. It is a term that I detest because it distresses me greatly, for it forces on me clothes that are not mine, which in fact belong to a human type that I distrust; the prophet, the soothsayer, the seer.

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.

I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy.

I think the discipline comes with turning that cellphone and Blackberry off and unplugging completely.

I begged the universe to make me a famous comedian, and it did. So I tend not to ask for any more.

A lot of people cry and complain and put their hand out and beg. It never goes well.

When you don’t have the whole attention of someone, you find yourself begging for it from everyone.