The imagination is the spur of delights… all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
MARQUIS DE SADESo much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . .
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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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 -
I’ve already told you: the only way to a woman’s heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Sex should be a perfect balance of pain and pleasure. Without that symmetry, sex becomes a routine rather than an indulgence.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses . . .
MARQUIS DE SADE -
In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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!
MARQUIS DE SADE -
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 -
Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Deep down he enjoys having gone so far as to deserve being treated in such a way.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
If 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 SADE -
In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Even those that are not frightful, and there is not one amongst them all that cannot be demonstrated within the boundaries of nature.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship.
MARQUIS DE SADE