Marquis de Sade Quotes & Sayings

“'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.”

“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.”

“No lover, if he be of good faith, and sincere, will deny he would prefer to see his mistress dead than unfaithful.”

“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.”

“Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.”

“My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!”

“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.”