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One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.
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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.
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Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.
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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?
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No lover, if he be of good faith, and sincere, will deny he would prefer to see his mistress dead than unfaithful.
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Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.
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What is more immoral than war?
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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.
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Lewd women, let the voluptuous Saint-Ange be your model; after her example, be heedless of all that contradicts pleasure's divine laws, by which all her life she was enchained.
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Religions are the cradles of despotism.
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So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
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Le duc imita bientôt avec Bande-au-ciel la petite infamie de son ancien ami et il paria, quoique le vit fût énorme, d'avaler trois bouteilles de vin de sens froid pendant qu'on l'enculerait.
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The philosopher must teach these pupils French students that it is far less essential to understand nature than to enjoy and respect its laws; that these laws are both wise and simple; that they are written in all human hearts, and that one need merely question a heart in order to appreciate its impulses.
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Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.
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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.
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They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.
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Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.
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The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.
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Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.
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It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.
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The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man.
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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!
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It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.
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Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.