“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.” ReasonLawMagistratesCommonsenseMagistrate Mocked Book:Betrayal Source: Betrayal
“Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all. The infant breaks his toy, bites his nurse's breast, strangles his canary long before he is able to reason; cruelty is stamped in animals, in whom, as I think I have said, Nature's laws are more emphatically to be read than in ourselves; cruelty exists amongst savages, so much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . . Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.” ThinkingMenFirstsLongSaidReasonAbleLawEnergyAnimalBreakVirtueCivilizationConsequenceVicesAbsurdCrueltyBreastsCivilizedSentimentsBitesNurseToysSavagesInfantDepravityCanaries Author:Marquis de Sade
“At all times, in every century, every age, there has been such a connection between despotism and religion that it is infinitely apparent and demonstrated a thousand times over, that in destroying one, the other must be undermined, for the simple reason that the first will always put the law into the service of the second.” FirstsHas BeensReasonAgeLawSimpleCenturyThousandConnectionsAll TimeDestroyingDespotism Author:Marquis de Sade
“Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.” CountryActionLawPassionLiteratureCenturyDangerousSilentLawyerCompareStrongestAnarchyLegalism Author:Marquis de Sade
“So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.” LongTodayLawForceSilenceOpinionLoudPrivacyDisplayObligedDiscretionChastity Book:Philosophy in the Bedroom: An Erotic Novel Source: Philosophy in the Bedroom: An Erotic Novel
“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.” NeedsSometimesLawLiteratureNaturePerfectVirtueInspireVicesImpulseEquilibriumMaintenance Author:Marquis de Sade
“The law which attempts a man's life [capital punishment] is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime - for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold.” MenLawFeetCrimeCommittedPunishmentUnjustRepressedCapital Punishment Author:Marquis de Sade
“Your service will be arduous, it will be painful and rigorous, and the slightest delinquencies will be requited immediately with corporal and afflicting punishments; hence, I must recommend to you prompt exactness, submissiveness, and total self-abnegation that you be enabled to heed naught but our desires; let them be your laws, fly to do their bidding, anticipate them, cause them to be born.” SelfLawDesireCausesBornPainfulPunishmentAnticipateHeedPromptsBiddingAbnegationExactnessDelinquency Book:120 days of sodom Source: 120 days of sodom
“If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finish, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.” IfsIdeasRealEndsMatterMomentsFormLawDeathSimpleAnimalExistencePrinciplesDyingDestructionEternityTransformationDenyCeasePassagesBeing RealAnnihilationTransmutation Author:Marquis de Sade
“In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration; the most extraordinary, the most bizarre acts, those which most arrantly seem to conflict with every law, every human institution... even those that are not frightful, and there is not one amongst them all that cannot be demonstrated within the boundaries of nature.” HumansInspirationSeemsLawNaturalConflictInstitutionsExtraordinarySexualityBoundariesBizarre Author:Marquis de Sade
“What you call disorder is nothing else than one of the laws of the order you comprehend not and which you have erroneously named disorder because its effects, though good for Nature, run counter to your convenience or jar your opinions.” RunningLawOrderOpinionEffectsDisorderConvenienceJars Book:Juliette Source: Juliette
“Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof it is composed; for, if they one time protect the individual, they hinder, trouble, fetter him for three quarters of his life.” IfsLawThreeIndividualInterestTroubleProtectConflictUniversalLawyerContradictionApplicationQuartersOne TimePerpetualHinderForgedFettersPersonal Interest Author:Marquis de Sade
“Murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime? If it is not, why make laws for its punishment? And if it is, by what barbarous logic do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime?” IfsStatesLawCrimeRepublicanHorrorEssentialsLogicMurderCriminalsPunishmentTolerateDuplicate Author:Marquis de Sade
