The art of seduction is of vital importance to human health. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to pleasure or to ruin—to the enlargement of the human race when it succeeds and to its diminishment when it fails.

Libertinism is based on deception—a truth known to every spendthrift rake. Georges Bataille tells us that Casanova, so great in so many sexual qualities, was especially distinguished by “the extraordinary skill with which he concealed his intentions and deceived both his wife and mistresses.”

Conceal your libertine dispositions and your condition will remain secret, which leads to victory in seduction; reveal your dispositions, and your libertinism will become patent, which leads to defeat. You can secure your loins against defeat in the seduction of the so-called innocent, since opportunities for getting fresh with the upright are provided by the upright themselves. Beneath their lofty rhetoric about propriety, all moralists secretly long to behave as we do.

In order to seduce the libertine must appear indifferent; when using your charm you must seem completely passive; when aroused, you must make the object of your desire believe you are interested in someone else; but once seduced, you must make your lover believe you are interested in her alone and no one else.

Lay bait to entice the upright. Feign disorder and crush every vestige of morality in your partners. If the object of your lust appears disinterested, uncover her most secret and forbidden desires. If she is desperate to make the beast with two backs immediately, evade her for a time to further inflame her lust.

If your lover is of choleric temper, seek to irritate her. Pretend to be weak, that she may grow arrogant and not realize your sexual potency. The good libertine plays with his partner as a cat plays with a mouse, first feigning weakness and immobility, and then suddenly pouncing upon her and consummating his love.

If your lover is taking her ease, give her no rest. Lure your lover on and tire her out. When she is weakened, she will indulge your basest desires if only in the hope of then getting some sleep. Make love when she is unprepared; appear where you are unexpected. Victorious strategies are never divulged beforehand.

The libertine who wins in bed must make many calculations before attempting seduction. If you wish to fuck you must first count the cost. If the climax is long delayed, then you will enjoy it more, but take care not to exhaust your strength, lest you find yourself incapable of orgasmic potency.

Although everyone has heard of stupid haste in love making—the sexual performance of the pop poseur Kurt Cobain, for example, has been characterized as “two coughs and it’s over”—neither is maximum pleasure associated with too great a delay. In love let your great object be a mind-blowing orgasm, not an over-lengthy campaign.

Only a libertine thoroughly acquainted with the pitfalls of lust can fully understand how to love most profitably. The skilful libertine rarely raises a second levy, instead he moves on to fresh conquests.

Bring sex toys with you when you’re out on the pull, but forage among the possessions of your conquests. If your lover knows her own desires, she may already possess the implements necessary to fulfil the fantasies lurking at the bottom of her mind.

In practicing the art of love, best of all is to take the virgin’s modesty whole and intact; to slowly shatter and destroy it is not so good. Degradation and humiliation are not the excellences of libertinism; to achieve excellence, the libertine must break the moralist’s resistance without humiliating her.

Ponder and deliberate before you make your move. A clever libertine avoids encounters with lovers whose spiritual delusions are keen, but rather attacks when they are sluggish: this is the art of studying moods. Remain disciplined and calm; await disorder and hubbub among believers: this is the art of self-possession.

Do not press a religious fanatic too hard, but remember that rapidity is the essence of seduction. Confound the object of your lust and devise unfathomable plans. The skilful libertine conducts a seduction as if leading the blind by the nose.

The seducer is like the one who climbs a great height and at the critical moment kicks the ladder away behind him. The libertine carries the object of his lust deep into hostile territory before showing his hand. The innocent must be made to burn their boats and break their cooking-pots; like a shepherd driving his sheep, the libertine must drive those he seduces this way and that, and they must know nothing of whither they go.

Feign stupidity by an appearance of yielding to religious beliefs. Affect coyness until the fanatic gives you an opening. Afterwards, depart with the rapidity of a running hare and it will be too late for the believer to charge you with impropriety.

The highest form of libertinism is to allow the moralist to seduce herself, to do no more than facilitate the debauchery to which we are all naturally prone. The libertine who knows when to move boldly forward and when to restrain himself brings the greatest pleasure to our world.

The libertine will win when he waits to take the moralist unprepared. If you know the demure believer and you know yourself, you need not fear the consequences of a hundred seductions. If you know yourself but not the demure believer, you will suffer a defeat for every victory gained. If you know neither the demure believer nor yourself, you will succeed only in a debauchery that perverts and prostitutes.

What the ancients called a clever seducer is one who not only wins, but who wins with ease. The libertine who sees only the obvious, slakes his lust with difficulty; the libertine who looks below the surface seduces with ease. The force of seduction is like the onrush of pent-up waters, bursting into a chasm a thousand fathoms deep.

Make the impact of your seduction like a grindstone dashed against an egg—this is effected by the science of weak points and strong. In all seduction, a direct method may be used once all guards have been lowered, but indirect methods will first be needed in order to secure this victory.

Indirect tactics efficiently applied are as inexhaustible as heaven and earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away but to return again. There are few musical notes, yet their combinations give rise to more melodies than will ever be heard. The successful seducer must deploy ambiguity, flattery, humour, and charisma: in concert these few tools allow for an unending series of manoeuvres.

Like an endless circle, the direct and the indirect lead to each other in turn. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination? The hand lightly touching the arm or the leg is like the torrent that rolls rocks along with its course. The quality of instinctive decisions about when to caress and when to hold back is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon.

The chief lesson here is the paramount importance of rapid evolutions and sudden rushes. Great seductions can thus be achieved with little effort. You may advance irresistibly if you target the innocent’s weak points—her desire to be admired and flattered. By discovering the innocent’s dispositions and hiding our own, we keep our forces concentrated and the enemy’s divided.

Make a display of weakness and want. A libertine is skilful in seduction when the object of his lust does not know that she should be defending herself; the libertine is skilful in defence when that same innocent fails to realize that she could denounce you as a rake. Seduction is like water; for in its natural course, water runs away from high places and hastens downwards. In seduction, take the line of least resistance; shape your course according to the ground over which you flow. Just as water retains no constant shape, so in seduction there are no constant conditions.

As the moon wanes and waxes, there will be short nights of lovemaking and long nights of fucking. Let your rapidity be that of the wind, because the wind is not only swift but invisible. Let your stratagems be as impenetrable as the night, but when at last you move, fall like a thunderbolt. O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you, inaudible!