Quotes By Marquis De Sade

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

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?

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.

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

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

There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.

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

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.

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.

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

One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.

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

Sensual excess drives out pity in man.

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

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!

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

The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.

"Sex" is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.

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.

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

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

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

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