What Is More Immoral Than

Cruelty, Very Far From Being A Vice, Is The First Sentiment Nature Injects In Us All. The Infant Breaks His Toy, Bites His Nurse's Breast, Strangles His Canary Long Before He Is Able To Reason; Cruelty Is Stamped In Animals, In Whom, As I Think I Have Said, Nature's Laws Are More Emphatically To Be Read Than In Ourselves; Cruelty Exists Amongst Savages, So Much Nearer To Nature Than Civilized Men Are; Absurd Then To Maintain Cruelty Is A Consequence Of Depravity. . . . Cruelty Is Simply The Energy In A Man Civilization Has Not Yet Altogether Corrupted: Therefore It Is A Virtue, Not A 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 To The Passions What Nervous Fluid Is To Life: It Sustains Them, It Supplies Their Strength.

And If I Were A Naughty Little Boy, The Idea Is To Spank Me Into Good Behavior?

How Delicious To Corrupt, To Stifle All Semblances Of Virtue And Religion In That Young Heart!