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Crime is the soul of lust. What would pleasure be if it were not accompanied by crime? It is not the object of debauchery that excites us, rather the idea of evil.

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
Pleasure
Rather
Debauchery
Evil
Excites
Idea
Accompanied
Soul
Lust
Ideas
Object
Would
Crime
Objects

More quotes by 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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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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I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.
Marquis de Sade
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The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable.
Marquis de Sade
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Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?
Marquis de Sade
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The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man.
Marquis de Sade
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Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
Marquis de Sade
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One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.
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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They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.
Marquis de Sade
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Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.
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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Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.
Marquis de Sade
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Consider the problem from the point of view of evil, evil being almost always pleasure's true and major charm considered thus, the crime must appear greater when perpetrated upon a being of your identical sort than when inflicted upon one which is not, and this once established, the delight automatically doubles.
Marquis de Sade
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In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
Marquis de Sade
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It is certainly no crime to depict the bizarre ideas that nature inspires.
Marquis de Sade
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Now I beg of you to tell me whether I must love a human being simply because he exists or resembles me and whether for those reasons alone I must suddenly prefer him to myself?
Marquis de Sade
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Nothing we can do outrages Nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigour and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power.
Marquis de Sade
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Certain souls seem hard because they are capable of strong feelings, and they sometimes go to rather extreme lengths their apparent unconcern and cruelty are but ways, known only to themselves, of feeling more strongly than others.
Marquis de Sade
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What we are doing here is only the image of what we would like to do.
Marquis de Sade