Quotes By Marquis De Sade

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

What is more immoral than war?

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

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.

No lover, if he be of good faith, and sincere, will deny he would prefer to see his mistress dead than unfaithful.

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.

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.

There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.

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.