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Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. Through man's passions, nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

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Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Age: 60 †
Born: 1835
Born: January 27
Died: 1895
Died: March 9
Historian
Journalist
University Teacher
Writer
Lemberg
Austria
Make
Woman
Slave
Men
Desire
Smile
Given
Subject
Decisive
Nature
Entire
Desired
Hands
Advantage
Toys
Ends
Subjects
Betray
Doe
Wise
Passions
Women
Passion
Desires

More quotes by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

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There is no describing the feeling of being mistreated by a successful rival in front of the woman you worship.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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Above all else I am a dilettante in life.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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Every woman has the instinct, the propensity to profit from her charms, and there's a lot to be said for giving oneself without love, without pleasure.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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It is merely the egoism of the man, who wants to bury a woman like a treasure. All attempts at using vows, contracts, and holy ceremonies have failed to bring permanence into the most changeable aspect of changeable human existence, namely love.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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Until then I had lived as I had painted and versified - that is, I never got far beyond priming canvas, beyond penning an outline, a first act, a first stanza. There are simply people who start all sorts of things and yet never finish any of them. And that was the kind of person I was.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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Never feel safe with the woman you love, for a woman's nature conceals more dangers than you think.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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You know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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You have a curious way of arousing one's imagination, stimulating all one's nerves, and making one's pulses beat faster. You put an aureole on vice, provided only if it is honest. Your ideal is a daring courtesan of genius. Oh, you are the kind of man who will corrupt a woman to her very last fiber.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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The person who doesn't know how to subjugate will all too quickly feel the other's foot on the nape of his neck.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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You modern men, you children of reason, cannot begin to appreciate love as pure bliss and divine serenity.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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Love knows no virtue, no merit it loves and forgives and tolerates everything because it must. We are not guided by reason.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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If I can't enjoy the full and total happiness of love, then I want to drain its torments, its tortures to the dregs then I want the woman I love to mistreat me, betray me, and the more cruelly the better. That too is a pleasure.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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Every man--I know this--turns weak, pliant, ridiculous as soon as he's in love.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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A real apple is more beautiful than a painted one, and a live woman is more beautiful than a Venus of stone.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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The struggle of the spirit against the senses is the gospel of modern man. I do not wish to have any part in it.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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Nature admits of no permanence in the relation between man and woman. It is only man's egoism that wants to keep woman like some buried treasure. All endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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Woman, as Nature has created her and as she is currently reared by man, is his enemy and can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. She will be able to become his companion only when she has the same rights as he, when she is his equal in education and work.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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You are cold, while you yourself fan flames.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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My heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
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Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will paint her, and go mad.
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch