Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

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.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

No lover, if he be of good faith, and sincere, will deny he would prefer to see his mistress dead than unfaithful.

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?

Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?

The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.

Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.

Woman's destiny is to be wanton, like the bitch, the she-wolf; she must belong to all who claim her.

What is more immoral than war?

Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.

'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.

They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.