Marquis de Sade's Quotes

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

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

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

Sensual excess drives out pity in man.

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.

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

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

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

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.

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.

She had already allowed her delectable lover to pluck that flower which, so different from the rose to which it is nevertheless sometimes compared, has not the same faculty of being reborn each spring.

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.

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.

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. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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

Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.