My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.
MARQUIS DE SADEDeep down he enjoys having gone so far as to deserve being treated in such a way.
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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God strung up his own son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he would do to me.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
One must do violence to the object of one’s desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The debility to which Nature condemned women incontestably proves that her design is for man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, to exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Either kill me or take me as I am, because I’ll be damned if I ever change.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Wolves which batten upon lambs, lambs consumed by wolves, the strong who immolate the weak, the weak victims of the strong.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care?
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 does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
What we are doing here is only the image of what we would like to do.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you…every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
For my system, which you disapprove of is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness -it means more to me than my life itself.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature’s mandates.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Religions are the cradles of despotism.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.
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 -
Lust’s passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
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