Marquis de Sade

“Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.”

“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.”

“Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates.”

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

“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.”

“If, though full of respect for social conventions and never overstepping the bounds they draw round us, if, nonetheless, it should come to pass that the wicked tread upon flowers, will it not be decided that it is preferable to abandon oneself to the tide rather than to resist it? Will it not be felt that Virtue, however beautiful, becomes the worst of all attitudes when it is found too feeble to contend with Vice, and that, in an entirely corrupted age, the safest course is to follow along after the others?”

“Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man's imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.”

“Man's natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes.”

“The primary and most beautiful of Nature's qualities is motion, which agitates her at all times, but this motion is simply a perpetual consequence of crimes, she conserves it by means of crimes only.”

“Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.”

“...that tender compunction of the honest-minded, so different from the hateful intoxication of criminals...”

“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.”

“Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?”

“Fuck! Is one expected to be a gentleman when one is stiff?”

“The imagination is the spur of delights... all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?”

“In order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice. Only then can we know the true measure of a man.”

“They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.”