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Marquis de Sade

French soldier and writer whose descriptions of sexual perversion gave rise to the term `sadism' (1740-1814)

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Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.

– Marquis de Sade

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You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others 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.

– Marquis de Sade

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All universal moral principles are idle fantasies.

– Marquis de Sade

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Any enjoyment is weakened when shared.

– Marquis de Sade

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Certain souls seem hard because they are capable of strong feelings, and they sometimes go to rather extreme lengths their apparent unconcern and cruelty are but ways, known only to themselves, of feeling more strongly than others.

– Marquis de Sade

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Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

– Marquis de Sade

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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.

– Marquis de Sade

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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.

– Marquis de Sade

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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!

– Marquis de Sade

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It is certain that stealing nourishes courage, strength, skill, tact, in a word, all the virtues useful to a republican system and consequently to our own. Lay partiality aside, and answer me: is theft, whose effect is to distribute wealth more evenly, to be branded as a wrong in our day, under our government which aims at equality? Plainly, the answer is no.

– Marquis de Sade

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Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

– Marquis de Sade

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Sexual pleasure is, I agree, a passion to which all others are subordinate but in which they all unite.

– Marquis de Sade

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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

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Consider the problem from the point of view of evil, evil being almost always pleasure's true and major charm considered thus, the crime must appear greater when perpetrated upon a being of your identical sort than when inflicted upon one which is not, and this once established, the delight automatically doubles.

– Marquis de Sade

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Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil.

– Marquis de Sade

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For mortal men there is but one hell, and that is the folly and wickedness and spite of his fellows; but once his life is over, there's an end to it: his annihilation is final and entire, of him nothing survives.

– Marquis de Sade

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I am about to put foward some major ideas they will be heard and pondered. If not all of them please, surely a few will in some sort, then, I shall have contributed to the progress of our age, and shall be content.

– Marquis de Sade

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I have supported my deviations with reasons I did not stop at mere doubt I have vanquished, I have uprooted, I have destroyed everything in my heart that might have interfered with my pleasure.

– Marquis de Sade

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If the objects who serve us feel ecstacy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired. The idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism.

– Marquis de Sade

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It has, moreover, been proven that horror, nastiness, and the frightful are what give pleasure when one fornicates. Beauty is a simple thing ugliness is the exceptional thing. And fiery imaginations, no doubt, always prefer the extraordinary thing to the simple thing.

– Marquis de Sade

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Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.

– Marquis de Sade

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No kind of sensation is keener and more active than that of pain its impressions are unmistakable.

– Marquis de Sade

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

– Marquis de Sade

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One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.

– Marquis de Sade

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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.

– Marquis de Sade

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The degradation which characterizes the state into which you plunge him by punishing him pleases, amuses, and delights him. Deep down he enjoys having gone so far as to deserve being treated in such a way.

– Marquis de Sade

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The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.

– Marquis de Sade

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The pleasure of the senses is always regulated in accordance with the imagination. Man can aspire to felicity only by serving all the whims of his imagination.

– Marquis de Sade

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There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship.

– Marquis de Sade

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

– Marquis de Sade

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

– Marquis de Sade

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We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.

– Marquis de Sade

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Wolves which batten upon lambs, lambs consumed by wolves, the strong who immolate the weak, the weak victims of the strong: there you have Nature, there you have her intentions, there you have her scheme: a perpetual action and reaction, a host of vices, a host of virtues, in one word, a perfect equilibrium resulting from the equality of good and evil on earth.

– Marquis de Sade

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