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 SADEI’ve been to Hell. You’ve only read about it.
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
There you have Nature, there you have her intentions, there you have her scheme: a perpetual action and reaction, a host of vices, a host of virtues, in one word, a perfect equilibrium resulting from the equality of good and evil on earth.
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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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Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.
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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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For the simple reason that the first will always put the law into the service of the second.
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If God permits virtue to be persecuted on earth, it is not for us to question his intentions. It may be that his rewards are held over for another life, for is it not true as written in Holy Scripture that the Lord chastenenth only the righteous! And after all, is not virtue it’s own reward?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
I’ve already told you: the only way to a woman’s heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.
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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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Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.
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Fear not lest precautions and protective contrivances diminish your pleasure: mystery only adds thereto.
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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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Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature’s mandates.
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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