Quotes from Marquis de Sade

How delicious to corrupt, to stifle all semblances of virtue and religion in that young heart!

The majority of pop stars are complete idiots in every respect.

Love Is Stronger Than Pride

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

Now I beg of you to tell me whether I must love a human being simply because he exists or resembles me and whether for those reasons alone I must suddenly prefer him to myself?

What is more immoral than war?

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.

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

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

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

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

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.