87 Quotes by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

It is only man’s egoism which wants to keep woman like some buried treasure. All endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities.

You were careless enough to leave me the choice. I choose therefore that you shall be my slave, and I shall make a toy out of you.

Watch out, I have a large, very large fur, with which I could cover you up entirely, and I have a mind to catch you in it as in a net.

It is only man’s egoism that wants to keep woman like some buried treasure.

Until then I had lived as I had painted and versified – that is, I never got far beyond priming canvas, beyond penning an outline, a first act, a first stanza. There are simply people who start all sorts of things and yet never finish any of them. And that was the kind of person I was.

You view love and especially women... as something hostile, something against which you defend yourself, although in vain, something whose power over you, however, you feel as a sweet torment, a prickling cruelty: this is truly a modern attitude.