The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable.
MARQUIS DE SADEHappiness 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.
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature’s mandates.
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In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration.
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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?
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Here am I: at one stroke incestuous, adulteress, sodomite, and all that in a girl who only lost her maidenhead today! What progress, my friends with what rapidity I advance along the thorny road of vice!
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So much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . .
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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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My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections; it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter it; and were it, I’d not do so.
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Can we become other than what we are?
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According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.
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Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.
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Any enjoyment is weakened when shared.
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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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How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us.
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Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil.
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And if I were a naughty little boy, the idea is to spank me into good behavior?
MARQUIS DE SADE