314 Quotes by Marquis de Sade

The philosopher who travels the world in order to learn must put up with all customs, all religions, all kinds of weather and climate, all beds and all kinds of food, and leave to the voluptuous, indolent man in the capital his prejudices...his luxury...that obscene luxury that, as it never contains any real needs, creates artificial ones every day at the expense of fortune and health.

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

The 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.

La imaginación es el aguijón de los placeres; en los de esta especie, lo regula todo, es el móvil de todo; ahora bien, ¿no se goza por ella?¿No es de ella de la que proceden las voluptuosidades más excitantes?

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

I want to be the victim of his errors.

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.

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.

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.