Marquis de Sade Quotes on Vice & Virtue (9 Quotes)

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.