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

“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.”

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

“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”

“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”

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

“The law which attempts a man's life [capital punishment] is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime--for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold.”