Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.
MARQUIS DE SADEEvil is… a moral entity and not a created one, an eternal and not a perishable entity: it existed before the world; it constituted the monstrous, the execrable being who was also to fashion such a hideous world. It will hence exist after the creatures which people this world
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
-
-
One must feel sorry for those who have strange tastes, but never insult them. Their wrong is Nature’s too; they are no more responsible for having come into the world with tendencies unlike ours than are we for being born bandy-legged or well-proportioned.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Hence, I must recommend to you prompt exactness, submissiveness, and total self-abnegation that you be enabled to heed naught but our desires; let them be your laws, fly to do their bidding, anticipate them, cause them to be born.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
What is more immoral than war?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
What I should like to find is a crime the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my life even when I were asleep.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Conspiracy! Intrigue! A rapidly thickening plot! Add some bestiality and a lecherous priest and I’d say you have the beginnings of a beautiful novel.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
I want to be the victim of his errors.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Even those that are not frightful, and there is not one amongst them all that cannot be demonstrated within the boundaries of nature.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the two, in the first instance I should be mad to believe in him, and in the second a fool.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Sensual excess drives out pity in man.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt; I have vanquished, I have uprooted,
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Lycurgus, Numa, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, all these great rogues, all these great thought-tyrants, knew how to associate the divinities they fabricated with their own boundless ambition.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
When I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general corruption or a distubance so formal that even after my death its effects would still be felt.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections; it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter it; and were it, I’d not do so.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Don’t have children: they deform women’s bodies and turn into an enemy 20 years later.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
If God permits virtue to be persecuted on earth, it is not for us to question his intentions. It may be that his rewards are held over for another life, for is it not true as written in Holy Scripture that the Lord chastenenth only the righteous! And after all, is not virtue it’s own reward?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Your service will be arduous, it will be painful and rigorous, and the slightest delinquencies will be requited immediately with corporal and afflicting punishments.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!
MARQUIS DE SADE -
So much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . .
MARQUIS DE SADE