“those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.”

“There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm.”

“What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.”

“Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?”

“I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue. It is unnatural virtue that makes the world, for those who suffer, such a premature Hell.”

“To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.”

“Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.”