Marquis de Sade Quotes

41 Sourced Quotes

Lycurgus, Numa, Moses, Jesus Christ, Muhammad—all these big scoundrels, all these big despots of our ideas knew how to bond their concocted divinities with their immense ambitions. Certain of captivating nations with the sanction of their gods, these villains, as we know, took care either to question their deities at an appropriate moment or to have them answer only whatever they believed could serve their purpose.

Marquis de Sade
The debility to which Nature condemned woman incontestably proves that her design is for man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, to exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse.

Marquis de Sade
Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.

Marquis de Sade
Lewd women, let the voluptuous Saint-Ange be your model; after her example, be heedless of all that contradicts pleasure's divine laws, by which all her life she was enchained.

Marquis de Sade
I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.

Marquis de Sade
All men are fools: to escape seeing one, one would be compelled to shut himself in his room, and break his mirror.

Marquis de Sade
In an age that is utterly corrupt, the best policy is to do as others do.

Marquis de Sade
Nothing we can do outrages Nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigour and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power.

Marquis de Sade
What 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
Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

Marquis de Sade
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?

Marquis de Sade