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French aristocrat and author. Quotes All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature;
the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost
- the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without
doubt, the most agreeable one. Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries
of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you
like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that
the greatest actions appear. Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress
of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying
this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when
we feel the need. Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted
fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born
of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak
men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage,
and philosophy. Here am I: at one stroke incestuous, adulteress, sodomite, and all
that in a girl who only lost her maidenhead today! What progress,
my friends... with what rapidity I advance along the thorny road of
vice! 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. Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes. Man's natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man
is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It
is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes. 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. Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man's
imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds
all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the
most means to satisfy his vagaries. No lover, if he be of good faith, and sincere, will deny he would
prefer to see his mistress dead than unfaithful. One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has
grown too old to blush. Religions are the cradles of despotism. "Sex" is as important as eating or drinking and we ought
to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint
or false modesty as the other. 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? To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude
that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell. Evil is a moral entity and not a created one, an eternal and not
a perishable entity: it existed before the world; it constituted the
monstrous, the execrable being who was also to fashion such a hideous
world. It will hence exist after the creatures which people this world. 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. Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little
pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the
persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what
is good and what is evil?
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