"I prefer the madness of passion to the wisdom of indifference."

"Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all."

"I am a man of my century, and I write for my century."

"There is a sum of evil equal to the sum of good, the continuing equilibrium of the world requires that there be as many good people as wicked people..."

"The horrors of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation."