Marquis de Sade
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer, famous for his libertine sexuality. His works include novels, short stories, plays, dialogues, and political tracts; in his lifetime some were published under his own name, while others appeared anonymously and de Sade denied being their author. De Sade is best known for his erotic works, which combined philosophical discourse with pornography, depicting sexual fantasies with an emphasis on violence, criminality, and blasphemy against the...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 June 1740
CountryFrance
Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.
Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.
The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.
It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.
There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship.
They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.
The horror of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation.
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.
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.
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
What do I see in the God of that infamous sect if not an inconsistent and barbarous being, today the creator of a world of destruction he repents of tomorrow; what do I see there but a frail being forever unable to bring man to heel and force him to bend a knee. This creature, although emanated from him, dominates him, knows how to offend him and thereby merit torments eternally! What a weak fellow, this God!
There are thorns everywhere, but along the path of vice, roses bloom above them.
It is certainly no crime to depict the bizarre ideas that nature inspires.
It is not the opinions or the vices of private individuals that are harmful to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures.