In an age that is utterly corrupt, the best policy is to do as others do.
MARQUIS DE SADEIn an age that is utterly corrupt, the best policy is to do as others do.
MARQUIS DE SADECruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.
MARQUIS DE SADEIn libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration.
MARQUIS DE SADEWhat does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act?
MARQUIS DE SADEChimerical 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 SADEThe degradation which characterizes the state into which you plunge him by punishing him pleases, amuses, and delights him.
MARQUIS DE SADEReligions are the cradles of despotism.
MARQUIS DE SADEIt is not the opinions or the vices of private individuals that are harmful to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures.
MARQUIS DE SADEEither kill me or take me as I am, because I’ll be damned if I ever change.
MARQUIS DE SADEHappiness 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.
MARQUIS DE SADEMiserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?
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.
MARQUIS DE SADELet us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy…
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 SADEMy manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!
MARQUIS DE SADEThe 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