For my system, which you disapprove of is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness -it means more to me than my life itself.
MARQUIS DE SADEFor my system, which you disapprove of is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness -it means more to me than my life itself.
MARQUIS DE SADEAny enjoyment is weakened when shared.
MARQUIS DE SADEThere are thorns everywhere, but along the path of vice, roses bloom above them.
MARQUIS DE SADEThat everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you…every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates.
MARQUIS DE SADEThe idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism.
MARQUIS DE SADEThere 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.
MARQUIS DE SADENo kind of sensation is keener and more active than that of pain its impressions are unmistakable.
MARQUIS DE SADEWere he supreme, were he mighty, were he just, were he good, this God you tell me about, would it be through enigmas and buffooneries he would wish to teach me to serve and know him?
MARQUIS DE SADEThe 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 SADEThe pleasure of the senses is always regulated in accordance with the imagination. Man can aspire to felicity only by serving all the whims of his imagination.
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 SADEWhat does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act?
MARQUIS DE SADEIt requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women.
MARQUIS DE SADEThe horror of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation.
MARQUIS DE SADESocial order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.
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 SADE