Quotes from Marquis de Sade

For mortal men there is but one hell, and that is the folly and wickedness and spite of his fellows; but once his life is over, there's an end to it: his annihilation is final and entire, of him nothing survives.

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

Murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime? If it is not, why make laws for its punishment? And if it is, by what barbarous logic do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime?

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

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

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

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

What is more immoral than war?

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

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?

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.

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 universal moral principles are idle fantasies.

Any enjoyment is weakened when shared.