It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.
MARQUIS DE SADEIt is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.
MARQUIS DE SADEI write what I see, the endless procession to the guillotine. Were all lined up, waiting for the crunch of the blade…
MARQUIS DE SADEOne is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.
MARQUIS DE SADEMurder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime?
MARQUIS DE SADEIn order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
MARQUIS DE SADEWe are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.
MARQUIS DE SADEIt is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.
MARQUIS DE SADEIs it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
MARQUIS DE SADEAre 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 SADEDread 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 SADEThe imagination is the spur of delights… all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
MARQUIS DE SADEOne 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 SADESo 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 SADEHence, 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 SADEWhat 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 SADEHow delicious to corrupt, to stifle all semblances of virtue and religion in that young heart!
MARQUIS DE SADE