Marquis de Sade Quotes

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

The imagination is the spur of delights... all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; ...

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with ...

He, being hacked and cut for three solid quarters of an hour by the vigorous hands that had taken ch...

We magistrates find that reason is the easiest thing in the world to dispense with; banished from ou...

The President was in seventh heaven when he heard himself being teased like this; he strutted about ...

When a man loves a woman, as our old troubadours used to say, even if he has heard or seen something...

Oh! my friend, never seek to corrupt the person whom you love, it can go further than you think...

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

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

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

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

In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measur...

Self-interest lies behind all that men do, forming the important motive for all their actions; this ...

...and above all, you should not think of writing as a way of earning your living. If you do, your w...

I want to be the victim of his errors.

Fuck! Is one expected to be a gentleman when one is stiff?

...that tender compunction of the honest-minded, so different from the hateful intoxication of crimi...

Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth t...

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, the...

Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man's imagination, and that he cannot t...

Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary...

Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all uni...

If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more ...

To lie is always a necessity for women; above all when they choose to deceive, falsehood becomes vit...

Believe me, Eugenie, the words "vice" and "virtue" supply us only with local meanings. There is no a...

The state of a moral man, is one of tranquillity and peace; the state of an immoral man is one of pe...

The imagination serves us only when the mind is absolutely free of any prejudice. A single prejudice...

What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act? That everything around you give you its ut...

But to declare his wishes only in some unknown corner of Asia, to choose the most double-dealing and...

The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.

What is more immoral than war?

It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to ...

We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her flood...

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other,...

There is no rational commensuration between what affects us and what affects others; the first we se...

‎"...θα πρέπει να αντιληφθείς, αγαπητή Τερέζα, ότι τα αντικείμενα δεν έχουν, κατά την άποψη μας, άλλ...

If, though full of respect for social conventions and never overstepping the bounds they draw round ...

The equality prescribed by the Revolution is simply the weak man's revenge upon the strong; it's jus...

Let us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be hap...

Do the meager pleasures you have been able to enjoy during your fall compensate for the torments whi...

...those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you ma...

Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusor...

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

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simp...

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strengt...

Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because y...