Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.
Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.
One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.
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.
It is certainly no crime to depict the bizarre ideas that nature inspires.
I am about to put foward some major ideas; they will be heard and pondered. If not all of them please, surely a few will; in some sort, then, I shall have contributed to the progress of our age, and shall be content.
I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt; I have vanquished, I have uprooted, I have destroyed everything in my heart that might have interfered with my pleasure.
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.
All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost – the most legitimate – passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.
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?
I want to be the victim of his errors.
Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.
One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.
God strung up his own son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he would do to me.
It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women.
Is it not a strange blindness on our part to teach publicly the techniques of warfare and to reward with medals those who prove to be the most adroit killers?
Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.
Certain souls may seem harsh to others, but it is just a way, beknownst only to them, of caring and feeling more deeply.
Love Is Stronger Than Pride.