Can We Become Other Than What We

No Lover, If He Be Of Good Faith, And Sincere, Will Deny He Would Prefer To See His Mistress Dead Than Unfaithful.

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.

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.

It Has, Moreover, Been Proven That Horror, Nastiness, And The Frightful Are What Give Pleasure When One Fornicates. Beauty Is A Simple Thing; Ugliness Is The Exceptional Thing. And Fiery Imaginations, No Doubt, Always Prefer The Extraordinary Thing To The Simple Thing.

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.