Virtue can procure only an imaginary happiness; true felicity lies only in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.
MARQUIS DE SADEVirtue can procure only an imaginary happiness; true felicity lies only in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.
MARQUIS DE SADELet us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy…
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 SADEHappiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime.
MARQUIS DE SADEIt requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women.
MARQUIS DE SADEWhen I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general corruption or a distubance so formal that even after my death its effects would still be felt.
MARQUIS DE SADEGod strung up his own son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he would do to me.
MARQUIS DE SADEIf Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws.
MARQUIS DE SADEWe are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.
MARQUIS DE SADEMy manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!
MARQUIS DE SADEIs it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
MARQUIS DE SADENo kind of sensation is keener and more active than that of pain its impressions are unmistakable.
MARQUIS DE SADESo much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . .
MARQUIS DE SADEThe completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all.
MARQUIS DE SADEMy 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 SADEWolves which batten upon lambs, lambs consumed by wolves, the strong who immolate the weak, the weak victims of the strong.
MARQUIS DE SADE