Marquis de Sade

“Ay del escritor ruin y vacío que, buscando únicamente halagar las opiniones de moda, renuncie a la energía que ha recibido de la naturaleza para ofrecernos sólo el incienso que quema complacientemente a los pies del partido que domina.”

“The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.”

“To enlighten mankind and improve its morals is the only lesson which we offer in this story. In reading it, may the world discover how great is the peril which follows the footsteps of those who will stop at nothing to satisfy their desires.”

“Lassen Sie mich dem Tod entgegen gehen. Ich fürchte ihn nicht, er wird meinen Leiden ein Ende setzen. Nur der muss ihn fürchten, der glücklich und friedlich lebt, aber das arme Geschöpf, das immer wieder auf Schlangen getreten ist, dessen blutige Füße nur Dornen verspürten, das die Menschen nur kennenlernte, um sie hassen zu müssen, das nur gelebt hat, um das Leben zu verabscheuen - das Mädchen, das Eltern, Vermögen, Hilfe, Schutz, Freunde verloren hat, das in der Welt nur Tränen als Trank und Leiden als Nahrung hatte -, es sieht den Tod nahen, ohne vor ihm zu zittern.”

“I suggest somewhere that anyone who wishes to write and has no aptitude for it would be better off making shoes for ladies and boots for men.”

“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.”

“Fear not lest precautions and protective contrivances diminish your pleasure: mystery only adds thereto.”

“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.”

“The impossibility of outraging nature is the greatest anguish man can know.”

“You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit othere is a fool. My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being,the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to. For my system, which you disapprove of is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness -it means more to me than my life itself.”

“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.”

“The only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment.”

“من السُخف أن يُعاقب المرء على أهواءه كي يتم ردعه عن الخوض بها مجدداً ،وَ كبح غرائزه وإن كانت شنيعة فَـ الطبيعة أهدتها إياه منذُ كان في رحم أمه ،فَـ كيف يُطلب منه أن يكون غير نفسه ؟! أليست الطبيعة وضعت الأهواء لسعادة الإنسان ؟!،إذاً لماذا يتنازل الإنسان عن سعادتة بِ حجّة حفظ المجتمع بينما المجتمع لا يهتم به !”

“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.”

“Chimerical 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.”

“One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.”

“Sex without pain is like food without taste”

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

“I want to be the victim of his errors.”

“Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.”

“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.”

“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?”

“It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.”

“I assumed that everything must yield to me, that the entire universe had to flatter my whims, and that I had the right to satisfy them at will.”

“My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.”

“Anything 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.”

“Religions are the cradles of despotism.”

“Were he supreme, were he mighty, were he just, were he good, this God you tell me about, would it be through enigmas and buffooneries he would wish to teach me to serve and know him?”

“Fuck! Is one expected to be a gentleman when one is stiff?”

“What I should like to find is a crime the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my life even when I were asleep, when I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general corruption or a distubance so formal that even after my death its effects would still be felt.”

“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”

“Behold, my love, behold all that I simultaneously do: scandal, seduction, bad example, incest, adultery, sodomy! Oh, Satan! one and unique God of my soul, inspire thou in me something yet more, present further perversions to my smoking heart, and then shalt thou see how I shall plunge myself into them all!”

“this is what happens to the plans of humans, it is when they make them in the midst of their pleasures that death cuts the thread of their days without pity, and in the midst of life, without ever concerning themselves with this fatal moment, living as though they were to exist for ever, they disappear into the obscure cloud of immortality, uncertain of the fate which lies in store for them.”

“Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.”

“When she's abandoned her moral center and teachings...when she's cast aside her facade of propriety and lady-like demeanor...when I have so corrupted this fragile thing and brought out a writhing, mewling, bucking, wanton whore for my enjoyment and pleasure.....enticing from within this feral lioness...growling and scratching and biting...taking everything I dish out to her.....at that moment she is never more beautiful to me. ”

“In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.”

“True happiness lies in the senses, and virtue gratifies none of them.”

“Wdzięczność to najgorsze z upokorzeń. Nic tak nie zobowiązuje, jak korzystanie z cudzych dobrodziejstw. Nie ma wyjścia: albo odpłacić tym samym, albo też czuć się podle. Najmocniej odczują to ludzie dumni, którym wyświadczona łaska ciąży tak bardzo, iż jedynym uczuciem, na jakie ich stać, jest nienawiść do dobroczyńcy.”

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

“Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain”

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

“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! ”

“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 fancies.”

“What we are doing here is only the image of what we would like to do.”

“I don't know what the heart is, not I: I only use the word to denote the mind's frailties.”

“Certain souls may seem harsh to others, but it is just a way, beknownst only to them, of caring and feeling more deeply.”

“The completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all;”

“...your service will be arduous, it will be painful and rigorous, and the slightest delinquencies will be requited immediately with corporal and afflicting punishments; hence, I must recommend to you prompt exactness, submissiveness, and total self-abnegation that you be enabled to heed naught but our desires; let them be your laws, fly to do their bidding, anticipate them, cause them to be born...”

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