Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

— Cioran, E. M.

There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.

— Eco, Umberto

The healthy man does not torture others -- generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

— Jung, Carl

Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now...

— Miller, Henry

The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden. Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.

— Mirbeau, Octave

I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.

— Sade, Marquis De