Top 154 Quotes & Sayings by Marquis de Sade

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

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 than unfaithful.

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

'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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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

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.

What is more immoral than war?

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

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

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.

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

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

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!

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

Sensual excess drives out pity in man.

You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit othere is a fool. My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being,the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to. For my system, which you disapprove of is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness -it means more to me than my life itself.

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

I've been to Hell. You've only read about it.

Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?

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

Either kill me or take me as I am, because I'll be damned if I ever change.

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.

We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.

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

Happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime.

Don't have children: they deform women's bodies and turn into an enemy 20 years later.

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.

One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.

Let us give ourselves indiscriminately to everything our passions suggest, and we will always be happy...Conscience is not the voice of Nature but only the voice of prejudice.

We monsters are necessary to nature also.

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.

Sex should be a perfect balance of pain and pleasure. Without that symmetry, sex becomes a routine rather than an indulgence.

Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.