In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.

Let us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy...Conscience is not the voice of Nature but only the voice of prejudice.

It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.

I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.

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

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.

My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.

Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil.

Either kill me or take me as I am, because I'll be damned if I ever change.

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

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!

If you want victory in your life you must learn to be alone with your own thoughts and cause them to be correct thoughts!

If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain.

My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.

It's all very well to have principles, but when it comes to money you have to be flexible.

Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.

I tried to be someone else, but nothing seemed to change. I know now, this is who I really am inside. I've finally found myself, fighting for a chance. I know now, this is who I really am.

There's a few people who I've accumulated over the years who I really trust to show a first cut to and to be helpful rather than unhelpful.

Whoever takes just plain ginger ale soon gets drowned out of the conversation.

Excellence isn't as much about being the best as it is about being the best you can be, and being better than you were before.

If I had engaged in politics, O men of Athens, I should have perished long ago, and done no good either to you or to myself.