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 SADEBeauty 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 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 SADEYour body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.
MARQUIS DE SADEThere is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.
MARQUIS DE SADECruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.
MARQUIS DE SADEThe completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all.
MARQUIS DE SADEThe 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.
MARQUIS DE SADEConversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.
MARQUIS DE SADESo much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . .
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 SADEThere is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship.
MARQUIS DE SADEAccording to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.
MARQUIS DE SADEOne is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.
MARQUIS DE SADEReturn 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.
MARQUIS DE SADEYou 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.
MARQUIS DE SADENever lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices.
MARQUIS DE SADE