314 Quotes by Marquis de Sade

Who cares whose head be blasted when we must procure so-called evidence? A thousand victims to discover one who's guilty. That's the spirit of the law.

The laws vainly try to talk virtue to the mass, but it's just talk. The people who make the laws are really too biased towards evil and never carry out their fine talk -- they merely make a stab at it for the sake of appearances, that's all.

Si hay algo extravagante en el mundo es ver a los hombres, que no conocen a su dios y lo que ese dios pueda exigir más que según sus limitadas ideas, querer, sin embargo, decidir sobre la naturaleza de lo que contenta o desagrada a ese ridículo fantasma de su imaginación.

We magistrates find that reason is the easiest thing in the world to dispense with; banished from our law courts as it is from our heads, we delight in trampling it underfoot, and that is what makes our judicial sentences such masterpieces, since (although commonsense never presides in them) those sentences are carried out with as much firmness as if people knew what they actually meant.

...and what creature, after all, is more precious, more attractive in the eyes of men, than the woman who has cherished, respected, and cultivated all earthly virtues, only to find, at every step, both misfortune and sorrow?

He who perpetrates an outrage may well be quick to forget what he has done. But they who have suffered at his hands are justified at least in remembering the wrongs he has done them.

The President was in seventh heaven when he heard himself being teased like this; he strutted about and thrust his chest out; never did a man of the robe stick out his neck so far, not even one who has just hanged a man.

One would have to lose one's wits to believe in a God, and to become a complete imbecile to adore Him.

One of the keenest pleasures of this monstrous prince, which arouses him most vigorously, is to have every offender he can snare impaled before his eyes without distinction as to age or sex. Standing at an open palace window, 15 or 20 feet from the place of execution, surrounded by women, he enjoys in fine comfort the cruel pleasure of watching victims suffer.