and how can you be happy when you can find satisfaction at any moment? It is not in pleasure that happiness consists, it is in desire – it is in breaking the chains that hold back this desire;

Do the meager pleasures you have been able to enjoy during your fall compensate for the torments which now rend your heart? Happiness therefore lies only in virtue,my child, and all the sophistries of its detractors can never procure a single one of its delights.

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.

The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.

The degradation which characterizes the state into which you plunge him by punishing him pleases, amuses, and delights him. Deep down he enjoys having gone so far as to deserve being treated in such a way.