Marquis de Sade
Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.Collection: Fitness
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.Collection: Women
'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Strength
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?Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Imagination
Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.Collection: Imagination
Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.Collection: Happiness
No lover, if he be of good faith, and sincere, will deny he would prefer to see his mistress dead than unfaithful.Collection: Faith
Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates.Collection: Nature
Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.
It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.
'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.
In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
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.
One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.
Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.
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.
The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.
Sensual excess drives out pity in man.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.
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.
What is more immoral than war?
There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.
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.
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.
Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.
It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.
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.
Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.
They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.
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.
To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.
Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?
All universal moral principles are idle fancies.
Religions are the cradles of despotism.
One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.
One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.Collection: Desire
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.Collection: Passion
Sex should be a perfect balance of pain and pleasure. Without that symmetry, sex becomes a routine rather than an indulgence.Collection: Sex
We monsters are necessary to nature also.Collection: Monsters
Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Dirty
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.Collection: Sex
Either kill me or take me as I am, because I'll be damned if I ever change.Collection: Life