Now I beg of you to tell me whether I must love a human being simply because he exists or resembles me and whether for those reasons alone I must suddenly prefer him to myself?
MARQUIS DE SADENever lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices.
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
-
-
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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The 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 -
Fear not lest precautions and protective contrivances diminish your pleasure: mystery only adds thereto.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
If God permits virtue to be persecuted on earth, it is not for us to question his intentions. It may be that his rewards are held over for another life, for is it not true as written in Holy Scripture that the Lord chastenenth only the righteous! And after all, is not virtue it’s own reward?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
We 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 SADE -
Sex without pain is like food without taste
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
What is more immoral than war?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Hence, I must recommend to you prompt exactness, submissiveness, and total self-abnegation that you be enabled to heed naught but our desires; let them be your laws, fly to do their bidding, anticipate them, cause them to be born.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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 -
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 -
If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
All universal moral principles are idle fancies.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The most extraordinary, the most bizarre acts, those which most arrantly seem to conflict with every law, every human institution.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Why do you complain of your fate when you could so easily change it?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
What do I see in the God of that infamous sect if not an inconsistent and barbarous being, today the creator of a world of destruction he repents of tomorrow.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
The 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 SADE