Fuck! Is one expected to be a gentleman when one is stiff?
The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.
”…θα πρέπει να αντιληφθείς, αγαπητή Τερέζα, ότι τα αντικείμενα δεν έχουν, κατά την άποψη μας, άλλη αξία από εκείνη που τους δίνει η φαντασία μας
To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.
There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.
Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the two, in the first instance I should be mad to believe in him, and in the second a fool.
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?
To lie is always a necessity for women; above all when they choose to deceive, falsehood becomes vital to them.
Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace
Let us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy…Conscience is not the voice of Nature but only the voice of prejudice.
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.
Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.
What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act? That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you…every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates.
If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.
…that tender compunction of the honest-minded, so different from the hateful intoxication of criminals…
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.
In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.
There is no rational commensuration between what affects us and what affects others; the first we sense physically, the other only touches us morally.
The state of a moral man, is one of tranquillity and peace; the state of an immoral man is one of perpetual unrest.
Self-interest lies behind all that men do, forming the important motive for all their actions; this rule has never deceived me
Oh! my friend, never seek to corrupt the person whom you love, it can go further than you think…
Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.
The President was in seventh heaven when he heard himself being teased like this; he strutted about and thrust his chest out; never did a man of the robe stick out his neck so far, not even one who has just hanged a man.
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.
When a man loves a woman, as our old troubadours used to say, even if he has heard or seen something that puts his beloved in a bad light, he should believe neither his ears nor his eyes, he should listen to his heart alone.
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.
Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.
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.
Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.
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.
Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.
No lover, if he be of good faith, and sincere, will deny he would prefer to see his mistress dead than unfaithful.
Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.
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.
The imagination is the spur of delights… all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.