I wished to stifle the unhappy passion which burned in my soul; but is love an illness to be cured? All I endeavored to oppose to it merely fanned its flames.
Self-interest lies behind all that men do, forming the important motive for all their actions; this rule has never deceived me.
Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness.
It has been estimated that more than 50 million individuals have lost their lives to wars and religious massacres. Is there even one among them worth the blood of a single bird?
To lie is always a necessity for women; above all when they choose to deceive, falsehood becomes vital to them.
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. A traveler journeys along a fine road. It has been strewn with traps. He falls into one. Do you say it is the traveler’s fault, or that of the scoundrel who lays the traps?
The imagination serves us only when the mind is absolutely free of any prejudice. A single prejudice suffices to cool off the imagination. This whimsical part of the mind is so unbridled as to be uncontrollable. Its greatest triumphs, its most eminent delights consist in smashing all the restraints that oppose it. Imagination is the enemy of all norms, the idolater of all disorder and of all that bears the color of crime.
Women are not made for one single man; ’tis for men at large Nature created them.
It has pleased Nature so to make us that we attain happiness only by way of pain.
The state of a moral man, is one of tranquillity and peace; the state of an immoral man is one of perpetual unrest.
Now we come to the crux of my philosophy: if the taking of pleasure is enhanced by the criminal character of the circumstances – if, indeed, the pleasure taken is directly proportionate to the severity of the crime involved –, then is it not criminality itself which is pleasurable, and the seemingly pleasure-producing act nothing more than the instrument of its realization?
From the two things one: either my husband is a brutal, jealous one, or he’s a refined man; in the first hypothesis, the best I can do is to revenge myself for his conduct; in the second, I would know not to burden myself; since I taste of pleasures, he’ll be happy for it if he’s honest: there’s not a refined man who doesn’t take pleasure at the spectacle of the happiness of the person he adores.
There is not a living man who does not wish to play the despot when he is stiff: it seems to him his joy is less when others appear to have as much fun as he; by an impulse of pride, very natural at this juncture, he would like to be the only one in the world capable of experiencing what he feels: the idea of seeing another enjoy as he enjoys reduces him to a kind of equality with that other, which impairs the unspeakable charm despotism causes him to feel.
First ourselves, then the others: this is Nature’s order of progression. Consequently, we must show no respect, no quarter for others as soon as they have shown that our misfortune or our ruin is the object of their desires. To act differently, my daughter, would be show preference for others above ourselves, and that would be absurd.
Thus, that happiness the two sexes cannot find with the other they will find, one in blind obedience, the other in the most energetic expression of his domination.
The laws vainly try to talk virtue to the mass, but it’s just talk. The people who make the laws are really too biased towards evil and never carry out their fine talk – they merely make a stab at it for the sake of appearances, that’s all.
A man learns nothing when he talks; he learns by listening. Which is why those who talk the most are, in the ordinary run of things, fools.
Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination. It is a manner of being moved which relies solely upon the way we see and feel. Except for the satisfaction of needs, there is nothing which makes all men equally happy. Not a day goes by but that we see one person made happy by something that supremely displeases another. Therefore, there is certain or fixed happiness, and the only happiness possible for us is the one we form with the help of our organs and our principles.
One would have to lose one’s wits to believe in a God, and to become a complete imbecile to adore Him.
He, being hacked and cut for three solid quarters of an hour by the vigorous hands that had taken charge of his education, was soon nothing but a single wound, from which blood spurted out on all sides.