If the objects who serve us feel ecstacy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired.
MARQUIS DE SADEIs it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
More Marquis de Sade Quotes
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Miserable 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 SADE -
Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will.
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 . . .
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Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?
MARQUIS DE SADE -
God strung up his own son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he would do to me.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.
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Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.
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A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking to suit other people!
MARQUIS DE SADE -
What I should like to find is a crime the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my life even when I were asleep.
MARQUIS DE SADE -
Behold, my love, behold all that I simultaneously do: scandal, seduction, bad example, incest, adultery, sodomy!
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Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices.
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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.
MARQUIS DE SADE