Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.
MARQUIS DE SADEThe man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.
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Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature’s mandates.
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I want to be the victim of his errors.
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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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There are thorns everywhere, but along the path of vice, roses bloom above them.
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Thread of their days without pity, and in the midst of life, without ever concerning themselves with this fatal moment, living as though they were to exist for ever, they disappear into the obscure cloud of immortality, uncertain of the fate which lies in store for them.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The 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?
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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.
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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.
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How delicious to corrupt, to stifle all semblances of virtue and religion in that young heart!
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If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws.
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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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The infant breaks his toy, bites his nurse’s breast, strangles his canary long before he is able to reason; cruelty is stamped in animals, in whom, as I think I have said, Nature’s laws are more emphatically to be read than in ourselves; cruelty exists amongst savages.
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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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And if I were a naughty little boy, the idea is to spank me into good behavior?
MARQUIS DE SADE