Social Order At The Expense Of Liberty

It Is Only By Enlarging The Scope Of One’s Tastes And One’s Fantasies, By Sacrificing Everything To Pleasure, That The Unfortunate Individual Called Man, Thrown Despite Himself Into This Sad World, Can Succeed In Gathering A Few Roses Among Life’s Thorns

If The Objects Who Serve Us Feel Ecstacy, They Are Much More Often Concerned With Themselves Than With Us, And Our Own Enjoyment Is Consequently Impaired. The Idea Of Seeing Another Person Experience The Same Pleasure Reduces One To A Kind Of Equality Which Spoils The Unutterable Charms That Come From Despotism.

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.

If Nature Denies Eternity To Beings, It Follows That Their Destruction Is One Of Her Laws. Now, Once We Observe That Destruction Is So Useful To Her That She Absolutely Cannot Dispense With It From This Moment Onward The Idea Of Annihilation Which We Attach To Death Ceases To Be Real What We Call The End Of The Living Animal Is No Longer A True Finish, But A Simple Transformation, A Transmutation Of Matter. According To These Irrefutable Principles, Death Is Hence No More Than A Change Of Form, An Imperceptible Passage From One Existence Into Another.

What I Should Like To Find Is A Crime The Effects Of Which Would Be Perpetual, Even When I Myself Do Not Act, So That There Would Not Be A Single Moment Of My Life Even When I Were Asleep, When I Was Not The Cause Of Some Chaos, A Chaos Of Such Proportions That It Would Provoke A General Corruption Or A Distubance So Formal That Even After My Death Its Effects Would Still Be Felt.