It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called Man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life’s thorns.
It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes.
It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.
In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.
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.
I’ve already told you: the only way to a woman’s heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.
Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil.
Nature has endowed each of us with a capacity for kindly feelings: let us not squander them on others.
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.
Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.
My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.
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.
Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.
And if I were a naughty little boy, the idea is to spank me into good behavior?
Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.
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.
Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.
Lust’s passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.