My Passions, Concentrated On A Single Point,

All Universal Moral Principles Are Idle Fancies.

The Mechanism That Directs Government Cannot Be Virtuous, Because It Is Impossible To Thwart Every Crime, To Protect Oneself From Every Criminal Without Being Criminal Too; That Which Directs Corrupt Mankind Must Be Corrupt Itself; And It Will Never Be By Means Of Virtue, Virtue Being Inert And Passive, That You Will Maintain Control Over Vice, Which Is Ever Active: The Governor Must Be More Energetic Than The Governed.

Can We Become Other Than What We Are?

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.

Behold, My Love, Behold All That I Simultaneously Do: Scandal, Seduction, Bad Example, Incest, Adultery, Sodomy! Oh, Satan! One And Unique God Of My Soul, Inspire Thou In Me Something Yet More, Present Further Perversions To My Smoking Heart, And Then Shalt Thou See How I Shall Plunge Myself Into Them All!