Marquis de Sade Quotes

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

"What is more immoral than war?"

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

"Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

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

"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."

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

"The horror of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation."

"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."

"Religions are the cradles of despotism."

""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."