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In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.

Marquis de Sade

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Marquis de Sade
Age: 74 †
Born: 1740
Born: June 2
Died: 1814
Died: December 2
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Writer
Paris
France
Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
Marquis De Sade
Donatien Alphonse François Sade
Comte de Sade
marquis de Sade
Must
Acquaintance
Vice
Vices
Virtue
Literature
Order
Firsts
Acquaint
First
Kinky

More quotes by Marquis de Sade

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Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.
Marquis de Sade
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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.
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Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.
Marquis de Sade
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If God permits virtue to be persecuted on earth, it is not for us to question his intentions. It may be that his rewards are held over for another life, for is it not true as written in Holy Scripture that the Lord chastenenth only the righteous! And after all, is not virtue it's own reward?
Marquis de Sade
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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.
Marquis de Sade
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The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.
Marquis de Sade
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Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!
Marquis de Sade
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We monsters are necessary to nature also.
Marquis de Sade
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If the objects who serve us feel ecstacy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired. The idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism.
Marquis de Sade
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Fear not lest precautions and protective contrivances diminish your pleasure: mystery only adds thereto.
Marquis de Sade
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My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking to suit other people! My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter it and were it, I'd not do so.
Marquis de Sade
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The mirror sees the man as beautiful, the mirror loves the man another mirror sees the man as frightful and hates him and it is always the same being who produces the impressions.
Marquis de Sade
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I want to be the victim of his errors.
Marquis de Sade
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It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.
Marquis de Sade
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I don't know what the heart is, not I: I only use the word to denote the mind's frailties.
Marquis de Sade
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Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.
Marquis de Sade
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Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.
Marquis de Sade
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I assumed that everything must yield to me, that the entire universe had to flatter my whims, and that I had the right to satisfy them at will.
Marquis de Sade
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My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.
Marquis de Sade
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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.
Marquis de Sade