Marquis de Sade Quotes (77 Quotes)

Sensual excess drives out pity in man.

The 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?

Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.

Ah, EugTnie, have done with virtues Among the sacrifices that can be made to those counterfeit divinities, is there one worth an instant of the pleasures one tastes in outraging them

In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration the most extraordinary, the most bizarre acts, those which most arrantly seem to conflict with every law, every human institution... even those that are not frightful, and there is not one amongst them all that cannot be demonstrated within the boundaries of nature.

Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.

The primary and most beautiful of Nature's qualities is motion, which agitates her at all times, but this motion is simply a perpetual consequence of crimes, she conserves it by means of crimes only.

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

Prejudice is the sole author of infamies how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice.

Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.

It is certain that stealing nourishes courage, strength, skill, tact, in a word, all the virtues useful to a republican system and consequently to our own. Lay partiality aside, and answer me is theft, whose effect is to distribute wealth more evenly,

Man's natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes.

It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle a mountebank and a number of silly women

I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

Murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime If it is not, why make laws for its punishment And if it is, by what barbarous logic do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime

Happiness 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.

'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.

Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing. 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.

It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.

True felicity lies only in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.

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

For mortal men there is but one hell, and that is the folly and wickedness and spite of his fellows but once his life is over, there's an end to it his annihilation is final and entire, of him nothing survives.

One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.

In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

Wolves which batten upon lambs, lambs consumed by wolves, the strong who immolate the weak, the weak victims of the strong 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.

If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finish, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.

Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates.

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 is and were it, I'd not do so. This manner of thinking you find fault with is my sole consolation in life it alleviates all my sufferings in prison, it composes all my pleasures in the world outside, it is dearer to me than life itself. Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness.

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.

Hope is the most sensitive part of a poor wretch's soul whoever raises it only to torment him is behaving like the executioners in Hell who, they say, incessantly renew old wounds and concentrate their attention on that area of it that is already lacerated.

Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Evil is... a moral entity and not a created one, an eternal and not a perishable entity it existed before the world it constituted the monstrous, the execrable being who was also to fashion such a hideous world. It will hence exist after the creatures which people this world.

They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.

Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof it is composed for, if they one time protect the individual, they hinder, trouble, fetter him for three quarters of his life.

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.

Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.

My 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!

The majority of pop stars are complete idiots in every respect.

Lycurgus, Numa, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, all these great rogues, all these great thought-tyrants, knew how to associate the divinities they fabricated with their own boundless ambition.

How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate.

Humane sentiments are baseless, mad, and improper they are incredibly feeble never do they withstand the gainsaying passions, never do they resist bare necessity.

It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.

The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man.

All creatures are born isolated and have no need of one another.

Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves all men are born free, all have equal rights never should we lose sight of those principles according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other.