One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.
MARQUIS DE SADEGet 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.
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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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!
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Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.
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Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof it is composed; for, if they one time protect the individual, they hinder, trouble, fetter him for three quarters of his life.
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Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.
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The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.
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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?
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One 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.
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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.
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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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Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature’s mandates.
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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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Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil.
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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.
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Lycurgus, Numa, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, all these great rogues, all these great thought-tyrants, knew how to associate the divinities they fabricated with their own boundless ambition.
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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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It is not the opinions or the vices of private individuals that are harmful to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures.
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Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.
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How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us.
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Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.
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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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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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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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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.
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I write what I see, the endless procession to the guillotine. Were all lined up, waiting for the crunch of the blade…
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It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called Man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life’s thorns
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Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest.
MARQUIS DE SADE