In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
MARQUIS DE SADESo much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . .
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Here am I: at one stroke incestuous, adulteress, sodomite, and all that in a girl who only lost her maidenhead today! What progress, my friends with what rapidity I advance along the thorny road of vice!
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 -
Don’t have children: they deform women’s bodies and turn into an enemy 20 years later.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?
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 -
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 -
Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Fear not lest precautions and protective contrivances diminish your pleasure: mystery only adds thereto.
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 -
I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
And if I were a naughty little boy, the idea is to spank me into good behavior?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Deep down he enjoys having gone so far as to deserve being treated in such a way.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
She had already allowed her delectable lover to pluck that flower which, so different from the rose to which it is nevertheless sometimes compared, has not the same faculty of being reborn each spring.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Let us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy…
MARQUIS DE SADE -
In an age that is utterly corrupt, the best policy is to do as others do.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
I assumed that everything must yield to me, that the entire universe had to flatter my whims, and that I had the right to satisfy them at will.
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To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing.
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The primary and most beautiful of nature’s qualities is motion
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Either kill me or take me as I am, because I’ll be damned if I ever change.
MARQUIS DE SADE