“One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.”

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

“It is always 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?”

“Fuck! Is one expected to be a gentleman when one is stiff?”

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

“How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate. The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold.”