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 SADEThe debility to which Nature condemned women incontestably proves that her design is for man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, to exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse.
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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Never 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 -
The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The mirror sees the man as beautiful, the mirror loves the man; another mirror sees the man as frightful and hates him; and it is always the same being who produces the impressions.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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 -
The debility to which Nature condemned women incontestably proves that her design is for man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, to exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
There 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 SADE -
Were he supreme, were he mighty, were he just, were he good, this God you tell me about, would it be through enigmas and buffooneries he would wish to teach me to serve and know him?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections; it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter it; and were it, I’d not do so.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Oh, Satan! one and unique God of my soul, inspire thou in me something yet more, present further perversions to my smoking heart, and then shalt thou see how I shall plunge myself into them all!
MARQUIS DE SADE -
It has, moreover, been proven that horror, nastiness, and the frightful are what give pleasure when one fornicates.
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 -
If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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.
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 -
Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
At all times, in every century, every age, there has been such a connection between despotism and religion that it is infinitely apparent and demonstrated a thousand times over, that in destroying one, the other must be undermined.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
If it is not, why make laws for its punishment? And if it is, by what barbarous logic do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime?
MARQUIS DE SADE