Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses . . .
MARQUIS DE SADEBehold, my love, behold all that I simultaneously do: scandal, seduction, bad example, incest, adultery, sodomy!
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The primary and most beautiful of nature’s qualities is motion
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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
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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.
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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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If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws.
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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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Don’t have children: they deform women’s bodies and turn into an enemy 20 years later.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
I’ve been to Hell. You’ve only read about it.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Pregnancies are damaging to health, spoil the figure, wither the charms, and it’s the cloud of uncertainty forever hanging over these events that darkens a husband’s mood.
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Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.
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It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.
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Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.
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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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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.
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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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Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature’s mandates.
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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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Sensual excess drives out pity in man.
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Conscience is not the voice of Nature but only the voice of prejudice.
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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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The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.
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My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being,the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to.
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What do I see there but a frail being forever unable to bring man to heel and force him to bend a knee. This creature, although emanated from him, dominates him, knows how to offend him and thereby merit torments eternally! What a weak fellow, this God!
MARQUIS DE SADE