There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship.
MARQUIS DE SADEThere is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship.
MARQUIS DE SADEIf 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 SADEHappiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.
MARQUIS DE SADEHow delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us.
MARQUIS DE SADEWhat 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 SADEWe devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate. The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold.
MARQUIS DE SADEBehold, my love, behold all that I simultaneously do: scandal, seduction, bad example, incest, adultery, sodomy!
MARQUIS DE SADETo judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.
MARQUIS DE SADEConspiracy! Intrigue! A rapidly thickening plot! Add some bestiality and a lecherous priest and I’d say you have the beginnings of a beautiful novel.
MARQUIS DE SADEThe more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.
MARQUIS DE SADEYour body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.
MARQUIS DE SADEI think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it.
MARQUIS DE SADEFor the simple reason that the first will always put the law into the service of the second.
MARQUIS DE SADEOh, 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 SADEIs it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
MARQUIS DE SADEThe idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.
MARQUIS DE SADE