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Marquis de Sade

Marquis de Sade Books

Philosopher

Juliette

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Betrayal

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Virtue

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Incest

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“My soul is callous, it is impassive... I put any sentiment whatever at defiance to attain it, with the exception of pleasure. I am mistress of that soul's movements and affections, of its desires, of its impulsions; with me, everything is under the unchallenged control of mind; and there's worse yet... for my mind is appalling. But I am not complaining, I cherish my vices, I abhor virtue; I am the sworn enemy of all religions, of all gods and godlings, I fear neither the ills of life nor what follows death; and when you're like me, you're happy.”

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Book:Juliette
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“Yes, Chevalier, you are young, your speeches illustrate it; you are wanting in experience; the day will come, and I await it, when you will be seasoned; then, my dear, you will no longer speak so well of mankind, for you will have made its acquaintance. ‘Twas men's ingratitude dried out my heart, their perfidy which destroyed in me those baleful virtues for which, perhaps, like you, I was also born.”

HumanityVirtueYouthHeartbreakExperienceDisillusionmentMisanthropyPainful PastNaivetéHard Heartedness
Book:Philosophy in the Boudoir
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“In my thirty years as a judge I have only ever pronounced in favour of the death penalty." "And don't you think," I asked him, "that you might have some reason to reproach yourself for the deaths of these people – as you would with a murder?" "Goodness!" he said. "Must we dwell on this?" "But," I told him, "this is nonetheless what polite society would call an absolute horror." "Oh," he replied, "one must learn to accept the horror of anything that makes one hard, and for one very simple reason – which is that this thing, however appalling you would like to think it might be, is no longer horrifying for you the moment it makes you come; it only remains so therefore in other people's eyes, but who can tell me that the opinions of others – which are almost always wrong on every score – are not equally so on this one? Nothing," he continued, "is fundamentally good or fundamentally bad – everything is simply relative to our customs, opinions and prejudices. Once this point is established, it is entirely possible that something perfectly indifferent in its own right might nevertheless seem contemptible in your eyes and yet most delightful in mine; and the moment I develop a liking for it – as difficult as it may be to determine its true worth – the moment it amuses me, would I not be mad to deprive myself of it just because you disapprove?”

PleasureMurderLust
Book:The 120 Days of Sodom
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“The rest of that worn and withered body – that arse of taffeta chiné, that gaping, rancid hole in the middle, those mutilations to the breast and to three fingers, that stunted leg that makes her limp, that toothless mouth – all of this inflames, excites our two libertines: Durcet sucks her from in front, Curval from behind, and while objects of the most exquisite beauty and utmost freshness are there before them, ready to satisfy their slightest desires, it is with something that Nature and crime have defiled, have withered, it is with the filthiest and most disgusting object that our two ecstatic lechers will taste the most delectable pleasures....And who can explain man after that?”

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Book:The 120 Days of Sodom
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“There are no more than two or three crimes to commit in the world,’ said Curval. ‘Once those are done there is no more to be said – what remains is inferior and one no longer feels a thing. How many times, good God, have I not wished it were possible to attack the sun, to deprive the universe of it, or to use it to set the world ablaze – those would be crimes indeed, and not the little excesses in which we indulge, which do no more than metamorphose, in the course of a year, a dozen creatures into clods of earth.”

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Book:The 120 Days of Sodom
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“That evening the sexes of the quadrilles were reversed, with all the little girls as sailors, and all the little boys as grisettes – it was a ravishing sight. Nothing inflames lust like this sensual little switch: one is pleased to find in a little boy that which makes him resemble a little girl, and a girl is much more alluring when, in order to please, she borrows from the sex one would prefer her to have.”

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Book:The 120 Days of Sodom
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“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.”

ImaginationFreedomTraditionIntellectFreedom Of ThoughtSocial NormsCustom
Book:Philosophy in the Boudoir
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“How many times, by God’s bloody prick, have I longed to be able to detonate planets, to destroy the sun itself, to pluck it from the universe and crash it into the earth, annihilating all Creation and replacing it with a lightless void of violence. Ah, that would be a crime! A cosmic crime, dwarfing the petty misdemeanours we are committing here, limited as we are to snuffing out a few meaningless souls”

PassionViolenceCrimeNihilismSadismLibertineSadeSodom
Book:The 120 Days of Sodom
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“Without principles and without virtue, and still full of the prejudices of that group of men whose pride had just led them to fight against the sovereign himself, Oxtiern imagined that nothing in the world could curb his passions. Well, of all those that burned within him, love was the most impetuous; but this feeling, which can be almost a virtue in a good soul, is bound to become the source of many crimes in a corrupt heart like that of Oxtiern.”

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Book:Virtue
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“How many times, by God’s bloody prick, have I longed to be able to detonate planets, to destroy the sun itself, to puck it from the universe and crash it into the earth, annihilating all Creation and replacing it with a lightless void of violence. Ah, that would be a crime! A cosmic crime, dwarfing the petty misdemeanours we are committing here, limited as we are to snuffing out a few meaningless souls.”

EvilViolenceCrimeMoralityEroticaPornSadismAnti ReligionSadeDe Sade
Book:The 120 Days of Sodom
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“How is it possible to act so harshly after having been so unhappy? I'd always believed misfortune nudges open the soul, that remembering the pains we ourselves endured, our heart grows more sensitive to the suffering of others. I was wrong. Unhappiness hardens people, dulling them to their own pain; one grows accustomed to be unmoved by that of others, to remain impassive in the face of attack and therefore indifferent to blows that strike others.”

PainEmpathyUnhappiness
Book:Aline and Valcour, or, the Philosophical Novel, Vol. III
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“My dear, the universe runs itself, and the eternal laws inherent in Nature suffice, without any first cause or prime mover, to produce all there is and all that we know; the perpetual movement of matter explains everything: why need we supply a motor to that which is ever in motion? The universe is an assemblage of unlike entities which act and react mutually and successively with and against each other; I discern no start, no finish, no fixed boundaries, this universe I see only as an incessant passing from one state into another, and within it only particular beings which forever change shape and form, but I acknowledge no universal cause behind and distinct from the universe and which gives it existence and which procures the modifications in the particular beings composing it.”

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Book:Juliette
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“How, you will go on, how have they been able to convince rational beings that the thing most difficult to understand is the most vital to them? It is that mankind has been terrorized; it is that when one is afraid one ceases to reason; it is, above all, that we have been advised to mistrust reason and defy it; and that, when the brain is disturbed, one believes anything and examines nothing. Ignorance and fear, you will repeat to them, ignorance and fear - those are the twin bases of every religion.”

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Book:Philosophy in the Boudoir
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“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.”

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Book:Betrayal
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“Clémentine viewed good deeds as trickery; sensitivity, a weakness from which we must protect ourselves; modesty, an error that always disadvantages the charms of one who's pretty; sincerity, an idiocy that makes a fool; humility, an absurdity; temperance, a deprivation for the best years of one's life; and religion, laughable hypocrisy.”

ReligionHumilitySincerityModestyGood DeedsTemperanceLéonore S Story
Book:Aline and Valcour, or, the Philosophical Novel, Vol. III
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“Rather than fatigue your children's young organs with deific stupidities, replace them with excellent social principles; instead of teaching them futile prayers which, by the time they are sixteen, they will glory in having forgotten, let them be instructed in their duties toward society; train them to cherish the virtues you scarcely ever mentioned in former times and which, without your religious fables, are sufficient for their individual happiness; make them sense that this happiness consists in rendering others as fortunate as we desire to be ourselves.”

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Book:Philosophy in the Boudoir
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“All my sensations have been snuffed out. I no longer have any taste for anything; there is nothing I like. It was foolish to feel so much longing for the world. It now seems dismal and boring. Sometimes I feel inclined to become a Trappist monk, and it is possible that one fine day I will disappear without anyone's knowing what has become of me. I had never felt so misanthropic as I have since being amongst people again, and if to them I seem like a foreigner, they can be sure that they produce the same effect on me.”

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Author:Marquis de Sade
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“What do I care for Williams? What do I care for anything on this earth? Listen, my dear fellow, when this combustible heart of mine falls in love, there is no obstacle capable of preventing it from being satisfied. The more I fall in love, the more combustible it becomes. For me, having a woman is satisfying only by reason of the trouble I am put to on the way. Bedding a woman is the most prosaic thing in the world.”

LoveSexMiss Henrietta Stralson
Book:The Crimes of Love
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“If you'll permit me, the distance that separates debauchery from impiety is far greater than that between debauchery and religious superstition. One does what one likes when safe from reproach under the mantle of religion; but the woman who loves virtue for its own sake and serves it because it inflames her heart, who's brazen and bares her soul—she'll be seen rushing headlong to commit errors she can't hide.”

ReligionVirtueDebaucheryLéonore S Story
Book:Aline and Valcour, or, the Philosophical Novel, Vol. III
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“How I love to hear the rich and titled, the magistrates and the priests, how I love to watch them preach virtue to us! It is very hard to keep oneself from stealing when one has three times more than one to live! A great strain to never think of murder when one is surrounded by sycophants and slaves for whom your will is law! Truly difficult to be temperate and sober when one is at all times surrounded by the most succulent dishes! So difficult for them to be sincere when they have no reason to lie!”

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Book:Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue
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