The horror of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation.

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.

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

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.

Empiricism teaches that there is a real world of fixed things on the outside and that ideas of these outside things are stamped on the mind which is at the beginning of life a blank.

Heartbreak could be lived with if it weren't accompanied by regret.

His fists clenched at his sides. 'Damn it! Where's your pride?' 'Pride? It's in my heart, of course.' 'You're letting me demean you!' She smiled. 'You can't do that. I can only demean myself.

All human joys are swift of wing For heaven doth so allot it That when you get an easy thing You find you haven't got it.

A man in public life expects to be sneered at -- it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.

A well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.

Forget the cheap white wine: go to beef and gin!

Excuses are used to justify leaving the scene of truth without changing.

It's important to wake up everyday and remind yourself what you're working towards. You create your own life, it's not set out there for you.

I am not merry, but I do beguile the thing I am by seeming otherwise.