Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.
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?
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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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.
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The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.
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In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
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Certain souls seem hard because they are capable of strong feelings, and they sometimes go to rather extreme lengths; their apparent unconcern and cruelty are but ways, known only to themselves, of feeling more strongly than others.
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One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.
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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.
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Wolves which batten upon lambs, lambs consumed by wolves, the strong who immolate the weak, the weak victims of the strong.
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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.
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Nothing we can do outrages Nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigour and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power.
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There are thorns everywhere, but along the path of vice, roses bloom above them.
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If the objects who serve us feel ecstacy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired.
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Virtue can procure only an imaginary happiness; true felicity lies only in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.
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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.
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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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Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves.
MARQUIS DE SADE