Marquis De Sade Quotes & Sayings

It is only by way of pain one arrives at pleasure — Marquis De Sade

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind. — Marquis De Sade

There are,' said Curval, 'but two or three crimes to perform in this world, and they, once done, there's no more to be said; all the rest is inferior, you cease any longer to feel. Ah, how many times, by God, have I not longed to be able to assail the sun, snatch it out of the universe, make a general darkness, or use that star to burn the world! oh, that would be a crime, oh yes, and not a little misdemeanor such as are all the ones we perform who are limited in a whole year's time to metamorphosing a dozen creatures into lumps of clay. — Marquis De Sade

First ourselves, then the others: this is Nature's order of progression. Consequently, we must show no respect, no quarter for others as soon as they have shown that our misfortune or our ruin is the object of their desires. To act differently, my daughter, would be show preference for others above ourselves, and that would be absurd. — Marquis De Sade

Any enjoyment is weakened when shared. — Marquis De Sade

Love Is Stronger Than Pride — Marquis De Sade

I don't know what the heart is, not I: I only use the word to denote the mind's frailties. — Marquis De Sade

The past encourages me, the present electrifies me, and I have little fear for the future; and my hope is that the rest of my life shall by far surpass the extravagances of my youth. — Marquis De Sade

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated. — Marquis De Sade

And if I were a naughty little boy, the idea is to spank me into good behavior? — Marquis De Sade

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. — Marquis De Sade

The impossibility of outraging nature is the greatest anguish man can know. — Marquis De Sade

My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way. — Marquis De Sade

For although we may fully respect our social conventions ... it may unfortunately happen that , through the perversity of others we encounter only the thorns of life, whilst the wicked gather nothing but roses.
will it not be said that virtue, however fair she may be, becomes the worst cause one can espouse ... when she has grown so weak that she cannot struggle against vice?
- La Nouvelle Justine ou les Malheurs de la vertu, suivie de l'histoire de Juliette — Marquis De Sade

To lie is always a necessity for women; above all when they choose to deceive, falsehood becomes vital to them. — Marquis De Sade

It has been estimated that more than 50 million individuals have lost their lives to wars and religious massacres. Is there even one among them worth the blood of a single bird? — Marquis De Sade

But a wife ... "
" ... is an individual who can be interesting when one makes use of her, but one must know how to detach oneself firmly when serious reasons separate one from her."
"That is a harsh statement."
"Not at all ... it is philosophy ... it is the tone of the day, it is the language of reason, one must adopt it or be taken for a fool."
"This supposes some fault in your wife, explain it to me: some natural defect, or a failure to comply, or bad conduct."
"A little of everything ... a little of everything, sir, but let us change the subject, I beg you, and return to that dear Madam: damn me, I don't understand how you can have been in Orleans without amusing yourself with that creature ... but everyone has her. — Marquis De Sade

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. — Marquis De Sade

What we are doing here is only the image of what we would like to do. — Marquis De Sade

There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship. — Marquis De Sade

If, though full of respect for social conventions and never overstepping the bounds they draw round us, if, nonetheless, it should come to pass that the wicked tread upon flowers, will it not be decided that it is preferable to abandon oneself to the tide rather than to resist it? Will it not be felt that Virtue, however beautiful, becomes the worst of all attitudes when it is found too feeble to contend with Vice, and that, in an entirely corrupted age, the safest course is to follow along after the others? — Marquis De Sade

Here am I: at one stroke incestuous, adulteress, sodomite, and all that in a girl who only lost her maidenhead today! What progress, my friends with what rapidity I advance along the thorny road of vice! — Marquis De Sade

No kind of sensation is keener and more active than that of pain its impressions are unmistakable. — Marquis De Sade

Sex without pain is like food without taste — Marquis De Sade

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

To enlighten mankind and improve its morals is the only lesson which we offer in this story. In reading it, may the world discover how great is the peril which follows the footsteps of those who will stop at nothing to satisfy their desires. — Marquis De Sade

What do I see in the God of that infamous sect if not an inconsistent and barbarous being, today the creator of a world of destruction he repents of tomorrow; what do I see there but a frail being forever unable to bring man to heel and force him to bend a knee. This creature, although emanated from him, dominates him, knows how to offend him and thereby merit torments eternally! What a weak fellow, this God! — Marquis De Sade

The slave preaches the virtues of kindness and humility to his master, because as a slave he has need of them;but the master, better guided by nature and his passions, has no need to devote himself to anything excepting those things which serve or please him. Be as kind as you wish, if you enjoy such things - but dont demand any reward for having had this pleasure — Marquis De Sade

Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders. — Marquis De Sade

How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate. The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold. — Marquis De Sade

Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite. — Marquis De Sade

We monsters are necessary to nature also. — Marquis De Sade

What does one want when one is engaged in the sexual act? That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you ... every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates. — Marquis De Sade

Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race. What crimes would have been spared the world, if they had choked the first imbecile who thought of speaking of you. — Marquis De Sade

Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice! — Marquis De Sade

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 — Marquis De Sade

This monster was outfitted with faculties so gigantic that even the broadest thoroughfares would still have appeared too narrow for him. — Marquis De Sade

It has pleased Nature so to make us that we attain happiness only by way of pain. — Marquis De Sade

Happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime. — Marquis De Sade

If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finish, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another. — Marquis De Sade

Wolves which batten upon lambs, lambs consumed by wolves, the strong who immolate the weak, the weak victims of the strong: there you have Nature, there you have her intentions, there you have her scheme: a perpetual action and reaction, a host of vices, a host of virtues, in one word, a perfect equilibrium resulting from the equality of good and evil on earth. — Marquis De Sade

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. — Marquis De Sade

One has always had too much when one has had enough — Marquis De Sade

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. — Marquis De Sade

Nothing quite encourages as does one's first unpunished crime. — Marquis De Sade

Fuck! Is one expected to be a gentleman when one is stiff? — Marquis De Sade

Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil? — Marquis De Sade

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! — Marquis De Sade

Only two things are required to accredit
an alleged miracle: a mountebank and a crowd of spineless lookers-on. — Marquis De Sade

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

Is it not a strange blindness on our part to teach publicly the techniques of warfare and to reward with medals those who prove to be the most adroit killers? — Marquis De Sade

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. — Marquis De Sade

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

If God permits virtue to be persecuted on earth, it is not for us to question his intentions. It may be that his rewards are held over for another life, for is it not true as written in Holy Scripture that the Lord chastenenth only the righteous! And after all, is not virtue it's own reward? — Marquis De Sade

That tender compunction of the honest-minded, so different from the hateful intoxication of criminals ... — Marquis De Sade

Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing. Pregnancies are damaging to health, spoil the figure, wither the charms, and it's the cloud of uncertainty forever hanging over these events that darkens a husband's mood. — Marquis De Sade

I am a libertine, but I am not a criminal nor a murderer, and since I am compelled to set my apology alongside my vindication, I shall therefore say that it might well be possible that those who condemn me as unjustly as I have been might themselves be unable to offset the infamies by good works as clearly established as those I can contrast to my errors. And yet you who today tyrannize me so cruelly, you do not believe it either: your vengeance has beguiled your mind, you have proceeded blindly to tyrannize, but your heart knows mine, it judges it more fairly, and it knows full well it is innocent. — Marquis De Sade

Nothing we can do outrages Nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigour and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power. — Marquis De Sade

This is what happens to the plans of humans, it is when they make them in the midst of their pleasures that death cuts the thread of their days without pity, and in the midst of life, without ever concerning themselves with this fatal moment, living as though they were to exist for ever, they disappear into the obscure cloud of immortality, uncertain of the fate which lies in store for them. — Marquis De Sade

Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness. — Marquis De Sade

Self-interest lies behind all that men do, forming the important motive for all their actions; this rule has never deceived me — Marquis De Sade

In an age that is utterly corrupt, the best policy is to do as others do. — Marquis De Sade

Crime is to the passions what nervous fluid is to life: it sustains them, it supplies their strength. — Marquis De Sade

Before you were born, you were nothing more than an indistinguishable lump of unformed matter. After death, you simply will return to that nebulous state. You are going to become the raw material out of which new beings will be fashioned. Will there be pain in this natural process? No! Pleasure? No! Now, is there anything frightening in this? Certainly not! And yet, people sacrifice pleasure on earth in the hope that pain will be avoided in an after-life. The fools don't realize that, after death, pain and pleasure cannot exist: there is only the sensationless state of cosmic anonymity: therefore, the rule of life should be ... to enjoy oneself! — Marquis De Sade

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. — Marquis De Sade

Women are not made for one single man; 'tis for men at large Nature created them. — Marquis De Sade

I wished to stifle the unhappy passion which burned in my soul; but is love an illness to be cured? All I endeavored to oppose to it merely fanned its flames. — Marquis De Sade

The debility to which Nature condemned women incontestably proves that her design is for man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, to exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse. — Marquis De Sade

Madame, I have become a whore through good-will and libertine through virtue. — Marquis De Sade

I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts. — Marquis De Sade

There is not a living man who does not wish to play the despot when he is stiff: it seems to him his joy is less when others appear to have as much fun as he; by an impulse of pride, very natural at this juncture, he would like to be the only one in the world capable of experiencing what he feels: the idea of seeing another enjoy as he enjoys reduces him to a kind of equality with that other, which impairs the unspeakable charm despotism causes him to feel. — Marquis De Sade

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. — Marquis De Sade

Thus, that happiness the two sexes cannot find with the other they will find, one in blind obedience, the other in the most energetic expression of his domination. — Marquis De Sade

There is no rational commensuration between what affects us and what affects others; the first we sense physically, the other only touches us morally. — Marquis De Sade

Throw those Germans into a carriage, will you," said he to one of his hirelings, a man who was accustomed to doing what was needed under these circumstances, "get them out of here, they'll not wake up. Strip them and dump them naked in some out-of-the-way street. God takes care of his little children. — Marquis De Sade

It is only by sacrificing everything to sensual pleasure that this being known as Man, cast into the world in spite of himself, may succeed in sowing a few roses on the thorns of life. — Marquis De Sade

Believe me, Eugenie, the words "vice" and "virtue" supply us only with local meanings. There is no action, however bizarre you may picture it, that is truly criminal; or one that can really be called virtuous. Everything depends on our customs and on the climates we live in. What is considered a crime here is often a virtue a few hundred leagues away; and the virtues of another hemisphere might, quite conversely, be regarded as crimes among us. There is no atrocity that hasn't been deified, no virtue that hasn't been stigmatized. — Marquis De Sade

We magistrates find that reason is the easiest thing in the world to dispense with; banished from our law courts as it is from our heads, we delight in trampling it underfoot, and that is what makes our judicial sentences such masterpieces, since (although commonsense never presides in them) those sentences are carried out with as much firmness as if people knew what they actually meant. — Marquis De Sade

Franval, who was now absolutely at ease, thought on,y of upsetting others; he behaved in his vindictive, unruly, impetuous way when he was disturbed; he desired his own tranquility again at any price, and in order to obtain it he clumsily adopted the only means most likely to make him lose it once again. If he obtained it he used all his moral and physical facilities only to do harm to others; he was therefore always in a state of agitation, he had either to anticipate the wiles which he forced others to employ against him, or else he had to use them against others. — Marquis De Sade

Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency? — Marquis De Sade

But to declare his wishes only in some unknown corner of Asia, to choose the most double-dealing and the most superstitious of peoples as followers, and the vilest, most ridiculous, and most roguish working man as representative, to muddle up the message so much that it is impossible to comprehend, to teach it only to a tiny number of individuals while leaving everyone else in the dark, and to punish them for remaining there ... Oh, no, Therese, no, no, such atrocities cannot be our guide. I would rather die a thousand times than believe in them. When atheism wants martyrs, let it choose them and my blood is ready. — Marquis De Sade

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. — Marquis De Sade

The completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all; — Marquis De Sade

It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women. — Marquis De Sade

Evil is ... a moral entity and not a created one, an eternal and not a perishable entity: it existed before the world; it constituted the monstrous, the execrable being who was also to fashion such a hideous world. It will hence exist after the creatures which people this world — Marquis De Sade

Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses; whence it follows that religious principles bear upon nothing whatever and are not in the slightest innate. Ignorance and fear, you will repeat to them, ignorance and fear - those are the twin bases of every religion. — Marquis De Sade

If the objects who serve us feel ecstacy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired. The idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism. — Marquis De Sade

[ ... ]virtue is not some kind of mode whose value is
incontestable, it is simply
a scheme of conduct, a way of getting along, which varies
according to accidents of geography and climate and which, consequently, has no
reality, the which alone exhibits its futility.
Only what is constant is really good; what changes perpetually cannot
claim that
characterization: that is why they have declared that immutability belongs to the
ranks of the Eternal's perfections; but virtue is completely without this quality: there
is not, upon the entire globe, two races which are virtuous in the same m
anner;
hence, virtue is not in any sense real, nor in any wise intrinsically good and in no sort
deserves our reverence. — Marquis De Sade

I have supported my deviations with reasons; I did not stop at mere doubt; I have vanquished, I have uprooted, I have destroyed everything in my heart that might have interfered with my pleasure. — Marquis De Sade

It is only by enlarging the scope of one's tastes and one's fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called Man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life's thorns — Marquis De Sade

Now we come to the crux of my philosophy: if the taking of pleasure is enhanced by the criminal character of the circumstances
if, indeed, the pleasure taken is directly proportionate to the severity of the crime involved
, then is it not criminality itself which is pleasurable, and the seemingly pleasure-producing act nothing more than the instrument of its realization? — Marquis De Sade

Hope is the most sensitive part of a poor wretch's soul; whoever raises it only to torment him is behaving like the executioners in Hell who, they say, incessantly renew old wounds and concentrate their attention on that area of it that is already lacerated. — Marquis De Sade

The degradation which characterizes the state into which you plunge him by punishing him pleases, amuses, and delights him. Deep down he enjoys having gone so far as to deserve being treated in such a way. — Marquis De Sade

There are thorns everywhere, but along the path of vice, roses bloom above them. — Marquis De Sade

Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling. — Marquis De Sade

The law which attempts a man's life [capital punishment] is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime
for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold. — Marquis De Sade

When we die, we die. No more. Once the spider-thread of life is severed, the human body is but a mass of corrupting vegetable matter. A feast for worms. That is all. Tell me, what is more ridiculous than the notion of an immortal soul; than the belief that when a man is dead, he remains alive, that when his life grinds to a halt, his soul
or whatever you call it
takes flight? — Marquis De Sade

What, then, are religions if not the restraint wherewith the tyranny of the mightier sought to enslave the weaker? Motivated by that design, he dared say to him whom he claimed the right to dominate, that a God had forged the irons with which cruelty manacled him; and the latter, bestialized by his misery, indistinctly believed everything the former wished. Can religions, born of these rogueries, merit respect? — Marquis De Sade

What is more immoral than war? — Marquis De Sade

Conspiracy! Intrigue! A rapidly thickening plot! Add some bestiality and a lecherous priest and I'd say you have the beginnings of a beautiful novel. — Marquis De Sade