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
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.
Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!
I've been to Hell. You've only read about it.
All universal moral principles are idle fancies.
If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.
It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.
One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.
It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women.
I want to be the victim of his errors.
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.
'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.
Any enjoyment is weakened when shared.
Religions are the cradles of despotism.
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.