Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Marquis de Sade (French Writer)

Marquis de Sade (1740–1814,) byname of Donatien-Alphonse-François, Comte de Sade, was a French aristocrat renowned for his extravagant lifestyle and exploration of extreme sexual and violent fantasies through his writings. He is best known for his unconventional preferences and erotic literature, ultimately leading to the term “sadism.”

Born into a prominent family in Paris, De Sade received a prestigious education, but he developed a deep fascination with the darker aspects of human nature. He engaged in numerous sexual escapades, often involving non-consensual acts, which resulted in his first imprisonment in 1777. Throughout his life, he faced confinement in various prisons and mental asylums due to societal judgment of his perceived moral transgressions.

During his time behind bars, De Sade devoted himself to writing extensively. His literary works encompassed novels, plays, and essays that portrayed explicit and sadistic sexual encounters, challenging prevailing societal norms and conventional morality. Among his most renowned novels are Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787,) The 120 Days of Sodom (1785,) Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795,) and Justine and Juliette (1797.)

De Sade’s writings and his philosophy, known as Sadeism, delved into the boundaries of desire, power, and violence. He advocated for the absolute freedom of individual desires, unrestricted by moral or legal constraints. His controversial ideas and explicit works made him a lightning rod for criticism and condemnation, leading to the banning of his writings for many years. Nevertheless, his works continue to captivate and stimulate discussions regarding the nature of human desire, morality, and the boundaries of artistic expression.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Marquis de Sade

Hope is the most sensitive part of a poor wretch’s soul; whoever raises it only to torment him is behaving like the executioners in Hell who, they say, incessantly renew old wounds and concentrate their attention on that area of it that is already lacerated.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Hope

There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Pain

If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finish, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Death, Dying

For mortal men there is but one hell, and that is the folly and wickedness and spite of his fellows; but once his life is over, there’s an end to it: his annihilation is final and entire, of him nothing survives.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Hell

Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Prejudice

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
Topics: Punishment

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.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Imitation

Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: One liners, Body, Mankind, Man

Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses; whence it follows that religious principles bear upon nothing whatever and are not in the slightest innate. Ignorance and fear, you will repeat to them, ignorance and fear—those are the twin bases of every religion.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Principles

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

Ah, Eugenie, have done with virtues! Among the sacrifices that can be made to those counterfeit divinities, is there one worth an instant of the pleasures one tastes in outraging them?
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Virtue

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
Topics: Compassion, Kindness

Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves; all men are born free, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Slavery

She had already allowed her delectable lover to pluck that flower which, so different from the rose to which it is nevertheless sometimes compared, has not the same faculty of being reborn each spring.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Sex

Evil is a moral entity and not a created one, an eternal and not a perishable entity: it existed before the world; it constituted the monstrous, the execrable being who was also to fashion such a hideous world. It will hence exist after the creatures which people this world.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Evil

Murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime? If it is not, why make laws for its punishment? And if it is, by what barbarous logic do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime?
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Murder

One must do violence to the object of one’s desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Violence

The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Faults, Mistakes

One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Cries, Crying

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
Topics: Change

Lust’s passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Desires

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
Topics: Philosophers, Philosophy

We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Government

The horror of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Marriage

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Religion

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost—the most legitimate—passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Criminals, Crime

Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need.
—Marquis de Sade

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
Topics: Prejudice

Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing. Pregnancies are damaging to health, spoil the figure, wither the charms, and it’s the cloud of uncertainty forever hanging over these events that darkens a husband’s mood.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Birth

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.
—Marquis de Sade
Topics: Happiness

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *