Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.
MARQUIS DE SADEIn libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration.
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws.
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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.
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For the simple reason that the first will always put the law into the service of the second.
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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.
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My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care?
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How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us.
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There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.
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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.
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It is not the opinions or the vices of private individuals that are harmful to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures.
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You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit othere is a fool.
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Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.
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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?
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Sensual excess drives out pity in man.
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Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race.
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The pleasure of the senses is always regulated in accordance with the imagination. Man can aspire to felicity only by serving all the whims of his imagination.
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Now I beg of you to tell me whether I must love a human being simply because he exists or resembles me and whether for those reasons alone I must suddenly prefer him to myself?
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Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.
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So much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . .
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Any enjoyment is weakened when shared.
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Even those that are not frightful, and there is not one amongst them all that cannot be demonstrated within the boundaries of nature.
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Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.
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Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest.
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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?
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Your service will be arduous, it will be painful and rigorous, and the slightest delinquencies will be requited immediately with corporal and afflicting punishments.
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Sex without pain is like food without taste
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The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.
MARQUIS DE SADE