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Marquis de Sade

Marquis de Sade Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Marquis de Sade Quotes

“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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“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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“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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“Virtue only needs to be worshipped; it follows the path to happiness...it must be so, a thousand arms open to receive its devotees, if they are pursued by adversity. But everybody deserts the guilty man...one blushes at one's attachment to him or at the tears one sheds for him, there is a fear of contagion, he is banished from everybody's hearts, and one condemns out of pride the man one ought to help out of humanity.”

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Book:Virtue
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“Believe me, Eugenie, the words "vice" and "virtue" supply us only with local meanings. There is no action, however bizarre you may picture it, that is truly criminal; or one that can really be called virtuous. Everything depends on our customs and on the climates we live in. What is considered a crime here is often a virtue a few hundred leagues away; and the virtues of another hemisphere might, quite conversely, be regarded as crimes among us. There is no atrocity that hasn't been deified, no virtue that hasn't been stigmatized.”

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Book:Philosophy in the Boudoir
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“...those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you may be sure, from the barbarous pleasure of making others as guilty and unhappy as they are. They are blind and would like everyone to be the same, they are mistaken, and would like everyone else to be mistaken; but if you could see into the depths of their hearts you would find only sorrow and repentance; all these apostles of crime are only evil and desperate people; you would not find a sincere person among them who would not admit, if he were truthful, that their poisonous words or dangerous writings had not been guided only by their passions. And what man in fact can say in cold blood that the bases of morality can be shaken without risk? What being would dare maintain that doing good and desiring good are not essentially the aim of mankind? And how can a man who will do only evil expect to be happy in a society whose strongest concern is the perpetual increase of good? But will not this apologist of crime not shudder himself when he had uprooted from all hearts the only thing which could lead to his conversion? What will stop his servants ruining him, if they have ceased to be virtuous?”

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Book:Gothic Tales of the Marquis de Sade
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“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.”

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Author: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.”

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Author:Marquis de Sade
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“The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.”

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Book:Juliette
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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.”

ActionEarthEvilStrongPerfectVirtueWeakVictimIntentionVicesReactionsGood And EvilHostPerpetualAggressionSchemesConsumedOne WordLambsEquilibriumAction And Reaction
Author:Marquis de Sade
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