THE EQUINOX
selfishness, the limbs dry up or become encumbered with fat.
Nature, in making of our body the portrait of our soul,
guarantees its resemblance for ever, and tirelessly retouches it.
You pretty women who are not good, be sure that you will
not long remain beautiful. Beauty is the loan which Nature
makes to virtue. If virtue is not ready when it falls due, the
lender will pitilessly take back Her capital.
Perversity, by modifying the organism whose equilibrium
it destroys, creates at the same time a fatality of needs which
urges it to its own destruction, to its death. The less the
perverse man enjoys, the more thirsty of enjoyment he is.
Wine is like water for the drunkard, gold melts in the hands
of the gambler; Messalina tires herself out without being
satiated. The pleasure which escapes them changes itself for
them into a long irritation and desire. The more murderous
are their excesses, the more it seems to them that supreme
happiness is at hand. ... One more bumper of strong drink,
one more spasm, one more violence done to Nature... Ah! at
last, here is pleasure; here is life... and their desire, in the
paroxysm of its insatiable hunger, extinguishes itself for
ever in death.
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