03Undated"...θα πρέπει να αντιληφθείς, αγαπητή Τερέζα, ότι τα αντικείμενα δεν έχουν, κατά την άποψη μας, άλλη αξία από εκείνη που τους δίνει η φαντασία μαςMarquis de Sade / quote ↗
04UndatedTo judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
05UndatedThere is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
06UndatedAnything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the two, in the first instance I should be mad to believe in him, and in the second a fool.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
07UndatedAre 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 / quote ↗
08UndatedChimerical 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 / quote ↗
09UndatedThe imagination serves us only when the mind is absolutely free of any prejudice. A single prejudice suffices to cool off the imagination. This whimsical part of the mind is so unbridled as to be uncontrollable. Its greatest triumphs, its most eminent delights consist in smashing all the restraints that oppose it. Imagination is the enemy of all norms, the idolater of all disorder and of all that bears the color of crime.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
10UndatedTo lie is always a necessity for women; above all when they choose to deceive, falsehood becomes vital to them.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
11UndatedBeauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplaceMarquis de Sade / quote ↗
12UndatedLet 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.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
13UndatedWe are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
14UndatedSexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
15UndatedWhat 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 / quote ↗
16UndatedIf 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.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
17Undated...that tender compunction of the honest-minded, so different from the hateful intoxication of criminals...Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
18UndatedThere 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 / quote ↗
19UndatedIn order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
20UndatedIf, 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 / quote ↗
21UndatedThere 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 / quote ↗
22UndatedThe state of a moral man, is one of tranquillity and peace; the state of an immoral man is one of perpetual unrest.Marquis de Sade / quote ↗
23UndatedBelieve 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 / quote ↗
24UndatedSelf-interest lies behind all that men do, forming the important motive for all their actions; this rule has never deceived meMarquis de Sade / quote ↗
