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 SADESensual excess drives out pity in man.
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.
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.
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We monsters are necessary to nature also.
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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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There you have Nature, there you have her intentions, there you have her scheme: a perpetual action and reaction, a host of vices, a host of virtues, in one word, a perfect equilibrium resulting from the equality of good and evil on earth.
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Any enjoyment is weakened when shared.
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We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.
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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.
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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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In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration.
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To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.
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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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It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called Man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life’s thorns
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Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the two, in the first instance I should be mad to believe in him, and in the second a fool.
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So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
MARQUIS DE SADE