Before all to be a great man and a saint for one's self.
XXXV
In the end, before all history and before the French people, the great glory of Napoleon III will have been to prove that the first comer, by seizing the telegraph and the national press, can govern a great nation.
Imbeciles are those who think that such things can be accomplished without the permission of the people,— and those who believe that glory can be founded only on virtue!
XXXVI
What is love? The need of coming out of one's self.
Man is an animal of worship. To worship is to sacrifice one's self and to prostitute one's self.
Thus all love is prostitution.
The most prostituted being is the being beyond compare, is. God, since he is the soul supreme for every individual, since he is the common, inexhaustible reservoir of love.