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Quote by Marquis de Sade

“DOLMANCE — [...] Now, it is this second kind of cruelty you will most often find in women. Study them well: you will see whether it is not their excessive sensitivity that leads them to cruelty; you will see whether it is not their extremely active imagination, the acuity of their intelligence that renders them criminal, ferocious;”

Quote by Marquis de Sade

Work

Philosophy in the Boudoir

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Author

Marquis de Sade
Marquis de Sade

Marquis de Sade, born on June 2, 1740, and died on December 2, 1814, was a prominent French philosopher and writer of the 18th century. He is known for his profound reflections on freedom, morality, and human behavior. more

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“My friends, don't idolize hardship. What you idolize is what your heart will look for and what your heart looks for is what you will have. And don't capitalize on misfortune, because you will always seek out to have capital! Throw away that pride! Don't put sorrow on a pedestal! If you ask me if I would rather have had my sorrows or not, I will tell you that no, I would rather have not had any of them! In the blink of an eye, I would rid myself of them! I have no pride. I don't rely on hardships and sorrows to mold me into someone. I don't allow myself to be dictated. When hardship and sorrow come knocking, saying "We are responsible for who you are today, let us in!" I'm going to say, in a split second, "No you're not! Go away, I don't owe you anything!”

“Let's remember that every bit of progress we have made in our own lives, as women, toward living out loud, in our power, and in the light, has been made possible not only by our own hard work and perseverance, but on the backs of the pioneering women before us, who literally put their lives on the line for us to be able to do so.”

“When I thought of my ancestors, if I thoughts of them at all, as some sort of vague and amorphous collection of dead people with no solid connection to me or the modern world and certainty no real relevance to either. It was interesting enough to read about the Cro Magnons got up to all those years ago but nothing much to do with me. But once I had realised through genetics that one of my ancestors was actually there taking part is was no longer merely interesting it is overwhelming. DNA is the messenger to luminate that connection, handed down generation to generation, carried, literally, in the bodies of my ancestors. Each message traces a journey through time and space, a journey made by the long lines that springs from the ancestral mothers. We will never know all the details of these journeys over thousands of years and thousands of miles, but we can at least imagine them. I am on a stage. Before me, in the dim light are all who have ever lives are lined up - rank upon rank, stretching far into the distance. They make no sound that I can hear but they are talking to each other. I have in my hand the end of a thread which connects me to my ancestral mother, way at the back. I pull on the thread and one woman's face in every generation, feeling the tug, looks up at me. Their faces stand out from the crowd and they are illuminated by a strange light. These are my ancestors. I recognise my grandmother in the front row, but the faces in the generations behind her are unfamiliar to me. I look down the line. The women do not all look the same. Some are tall, some are short, some are beautiful, some are plain, some look wealthy, others poor. I want to ask them each in turn about their lives, their hopes, their disappointments, their joys and their sacrifices. I speak but they cannot hear. I feel a strong connection. These are all my mothers who passed this precious message from one to another through a thousand births, a thousand screams, a thousand embraces, a thousand new born babies. The thread becomes an umbilical cord. A thousand rows back stands Tara herself, the ancestral mother of my clan. She pulls on the cord. In the great throng, a million ancestors feel the tug in lines that radiate out from her source.”