"I'm infinitely less afraid," she told me one night, "of serving this monster's pleasures than being his main course at dinner."   "Not me! I'd prefer a thousand times to be eaten than satisfy his disgraceful lust."   "Don't you think that's taking virtue too far?"   "No, it's only to cherish the man I love."   "When things calm down a little, you'll explain to me such délicatesse. I still don't understand it."   

If you'll permit me, the distance that separates debauchery from impiety is far greater than that between debauchery and religious superstition. One does what one likes when safe from reproach under the mantle of religion; but the woman who loves virtue for its own sake and serves it because it inflames her heart, who's brazen and bares her soul—she'll be seen rushing headlong to commit errors she can't hide.

If really wise, a man should unquestionably prefer a libertine for a spouse than a woman who's only served modesty; and he should stop thinking that such modesty, treasured only by ugly women, is worth a whit to anybody else.

One can be, in a word, virtuous in thought, character, and temperament—without being obliged to adopt a thousand absurd systems that have nothing to do with virtue.

Virtue only needs to be worshipped; it follows the path to happiness...it must be so, a thousand arms open to receive its devotees, if they are pursued by adversity. But everybody deserts the guilty man...one blushes at one's attachment to him or at the tears one sheds for him, there is a fear of contagion, he is banished from everybody's hearts, and one condemns out of pride the man one ought to help out of humanity.

Crime causes so much horror, even to them [criminals], that they would like, in order to escape from the necessity they feel to be bad, to be believed and always to be depicted as virtuous.