“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”

“Nicht die Tugend fordert man von uns, sondern nur ihre Maske. Wenn wir uns zu verstellen wissen, so ist man zufrieden.”

“Crime is to the passions what nervous fluid is to life: it sustains them, it supplies their strength.”

“It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.”

“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”

“It is only by way of pain one arrives at pleasure”

“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?”