Cruelty, Very Far From Being

Hope Is The Most Sensitive Part Of A Poor Wretch's Soul; Whoever Raises It Only To Torment Him Is Behaving Like The Executioners In Hell Who, They Say, Incessantly Renew Old Wounds And Concentrate Their Attention On That Area Of It That Is Already Lacerated.

Sexual Pleasure Is, I Agree, A Passion To Which All Others Are Subordinate But In Which They All Unite.

In Libertinage, Nothing Is Frightful, Because Everything Libertinage Suggests Is Also A Natural Inspiration; The Most Extraordinary, The Most Bizarre Acts, Those Which Most Arrantly Seem To Conflict With Every Law, Every Human Institution... Even Those That Are Not Frightful, And There Is Not One Amongst Them All That Cannot Be Demonstrated Within The Boundaries Of Nature.

Imperious, Choleric, Irascible, Extreme In Everything, With A Dissolute Imagination The Like Of Which Has Never Been Seen, Atheistic To The Point Of Fanaticism, There You Have Me In A Nutshell, And Kill Me Again Or Take Me As I Am, For I Shall Not Change.

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.