In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
For mortal men there is but one hell, and that is the folly and wickedness and spite of his fellows; but once his life is over, there’s an end to it: his annihilation is final and entire, of him nothing survives.
Crime is to the passions what nervous fluid is to life: it sustains them, it supplies their strength.
You are afraid of the people unrestrained-how ridiculous!
The horror of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation.
Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.
Nothing we can do outrages Nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigour and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power.
The primary and most beautiful of Nature’s qualities is motion, which agitates her at all times, but this motion is simply a perpetual consequence of crimes, she conserves it by means of crimes only.
What you call disorder is nothing else than one of the laws of the order you comprehend not and which you have erroneously named disorder because its effects, though good for Nature, run counter to your convenience or jar your opinions.
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.
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.
There are thorns everywhere, but along the path of vice, roses bloom above them.
What is more immoral than war?
Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.
Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing. Pregnancies are damaging to health, spoil the figure, wither the charms, and it’s the cloud of uncertainty forever hanging over these events that darkens a husband’s mood.
Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
Man’s natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes.
The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.
Humane sentiments are baseless, mad, and improper; they are incredibly feeble; never do they withstand the gainsaying passions, never do they resist bare necessity.
They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.
Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?