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 Quote

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?
- Marquis de Sade Quote

Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

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 Quote

I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

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 Quote

Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

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.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

No lover, if he be of good faith, and sincere, will deny he would prefer to see his mistress dead than unfaithful.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

Religions are the cradles of despotism.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

"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 Quote

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 Quote

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

The imagination is the spur of delights... all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
- Marquis de Sade Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

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 Quote

They declaim against the passions without bothering to think that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

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 Quote

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.
- Marquis de Sade Quote

What is more immoral than war?
- Marquis de Sade Quote

Woman's destiny is to be wanton, like the bitch, the she-wolf; she must belong to all who claim her.
- Marquis de Sade Quote