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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

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Murder Is A Horror,

Marquis De Sade

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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?

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The Degradation Which Characterizes The State Into Which You Plunge Him By Punishing Him Pleases, Amuses, And Delights Him. Deep Down He Enjoys Having Gone So Far As To Deserve Being Treated In Such A Way.

Lycurgus, Numa, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, All These Great Rogues, All These Great Thought-tyrants, Knew How To Associate The Divinities They Fabricated With Their Own Boundless Ambition.

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.

The Horror Of Wedlock, The Most Appalling, The Most Loathsome Of All The Bonds Humankind Has Devised For Its Own Discomfort And Degradation.

Your Body Is The Church Where Nature Asks To Be Reverenced.

Truth Titillates The Imagination Far Less Than Fiction.

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Are Your Convictions So Fragile That Mine Cannot Stand In Opposition To Them? Is Your God So Illusory That The Presence Of My Devil Reveals His Insufficiency?

Sensual Excess Drives Out Pity In Man.

Religions Are The Cradles Of Despotism.

Here Am I: At One Stroke Incestuous, Adulteress, Sodomite, And All That In A Girl Who Only Lost Her Maidenhead Today! What Progress, My Friends With What Rapidity I Advance Along The Thorny Road Of Vice!

What You Call Disorder Is Nothing Else Than One Of The Laws Of The Order You Comprehend Not And Which You Have Erroneously Named Disorder Because Its Effects, Though Good For Nature, Run Counter To Your Convenience Or Jar Your Opinions.

What Does One Want When One Is Engaged In The Sexual Act? That Everything Around You Give You Its Utter Attention, Think Only Of You, Care Only For You...every Man Wants To Be A Tyrant When He Fornicates.

Nature Has Endowed Each Of Us With A Capacity For Kindly Feelings: Let Us Not Squander Them On Others.

I Want To Be The Victim Of His Errors.

Happiness Lies Only In That Which Excites, And The Only Thing That Excites Is Crime.

Your Service Will Be Arduous, It Will Be Painful And Rigorous, And The Slightest Delinquencies Will Be Requited Immediately With Corporal And Afflicting Punishments; Hence, I Must Recommend To You Prompt Exactness, Submissiveness, And Total Self-abnegation That You Be Enabled To Heed Naught But Our Desires; Let Them Be Your Laws, Fly To Do Their Bidding, Anticipate Them, Cause Them To Be Born.

If The Objects Who Serve Us Feel Ecstacy, They Are Much More Often Concerned With Themselves Than With Us, And Our Own Enjoyment Is Consequently Impaired. The Idea Of Seeing Another Person Experience The Same Pleasure Reduces One To A Kind Of Equality Which Spoils The Unutterable Charms That Come From Despotism.

No Kind Of Sensation Is Keener And More Active Than That Of Pain Its Impressions Are Unmistakable.

Crime Is To The Passions What Nervous Fluid Is To Life: It Sustains Them, It Supplies Their Strength.

The Most Fortunate Of Persons Is He Who Has The Most Means To Satisfy His Vagaries.

The More Defects A Man May Have, The Older He Is, The Less Lovable, The More Resounding His Success.

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Let Us Give Ourselves Indiscriminately To Everything Our Passions Suggest, And We Will Always Be Happy...conscience Is Not The Voice Of Nature But Only The Voice Of Prejudice.

All Universal Moral Principles Are Idle Fancies.

Sexual Pleasure Is, I Agree, A Passion To Which All Others Are Subordinate But In Which They All Unite.

And If I Were A Naughty Little Boy, The Idea Is To Spank Me Into Good Behavior?

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.

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.

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.

In Libertinage, Nothing Is Frightful, Because Everything Libertinage Suggests Is Also A Natural Inspiration; The Most Extraordinary, The Most Bizarre Acts, Those Which Most Arrantly Seem To Conflict With Every Law, Every Human Institution... Even Those That Are Not Frightful, And There Is Not One Amongst Them All That Cannot Be Demonstrated Within The Boundaries Of Nature.

I've Been To Hell. You've Only Read About It.

To Judge From The Notions Expounded By Theologians, One Must Conclude That God Created Most Men Simply With A View To Crowding Hell.

Are Wars Anything But The Means Whereby A Nation Is Nourished, Whereby It Is Strengthened, Whereby It Is Buttressed?

Crime Is The Soul Of Lust. What Would Pleasure Be If It Were Not Accompanied By Crime? It Is Not The Object Of Debauchery That Excites Us, Rather The Idea Of Evil.

Don't Have Children: They Deform Women's Bodies And Turn Into An Enemy 20 Years Later.

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The Man Who Alters His Way Of Thinking To Suit Others Is A Fool.

The Mirror Sees The Man As Beautiful, The Mirror Loves The Man; Another Mirror Sees The Man As Frightful And Hates Him; And It Is Always The Same Being Who Produces The Impressions.

How Delightful Are The Pleasures Of The Imagination! In Those Delectable Moments, The Whole World Is Ours; Not A Single Creature Resists Us, We Devastate The World, We Repopulate It With New Objects Which, In Turn, We Immolate. The Means To Every Crime Is Ours, And We Employ Them All, We Multiply The Horror A Hundredfold.

One Weeps Not Save When One Is Afraid, And That Is Why Kings Are Tyrants.

Thread Of Their Days Without Pity, And In The Midst Of Life, Without Ever Concerning Themselves With This Fatal Moment, Living As Though They Were To Exist For Ever, They Disappear Into The Obscure Cloud Of Immortality, Uncertain Of The Fate Which Lies In Store For Them.

I Think That If There Were A God, There Would Be Less Evil On This Earth. I Believe That If Evil Exists Here Below, Then Either It Was Willed By God Or It Was Beyond His Powers To Prevent It. Now I Cannot Bring Myself To Fear A God Who Is Either Spiteful Or Weak. I Defy Him Without Fear And Care Not A Fig For His Thunderbolts.

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'til The Infallibility Of Human Judgements Shall Have Been Proved To Me, I Shall Demand The Abolition Of The Penalty Of Death.

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The Debility To Which Nature Condemned Women Incontestably Proves That Her Design Is For Man, Who Then More Than Ever Enjoys His Strength, To Exercise It In All The Violent Forms That Suit Him Best, By Means Of Tortures, If He Be So Inclined, Or Worse.

There Is No God, Nature Sufficeth Unto Herself; In No Wise Hath She Need Of An Author.

I Don't Know What The Heart Is, Not I: I Only Use The Word To Denote The Mind's Frailties.

Variety, Multiplicity Are The Two Most Powerful Vehicles Of Lust.

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.

Is It Not A Strange Blindness On Our Part To Teach Publicly The Techniques Of Warfare And To Reward With Medals Those Who Prove To Be The Most Adroit Killers?

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.

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Humane Sentiments Are Baseless, Mad, And Improper; They Are Incredibly Feeble; Never Do They Withstand The Gainsaying Passions, Never Do They Resist Bare Necessity.

It Is Not My Mode Of Thought That Has Caused My Misfortunes, But The Mode Of Thought Of Others.

Misfortunes Of Others

No Lover, If He Be Of Good Faith, And Sincere, Will Deny He Would Prefer To See His Mistress Dead Than Unfaithful.

Lust's Passion Will Be Served; It Demands, It Militates, It Tyrannizes.

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.

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.

The Idea Of God Is The Sole Wrong For Which I Cannot Forgive Mankind.

You Are Afraid Of The People Unrestrained-how Ridiculous!

It Requires Only Two Things To Win Credit For A Miracle: A Mountebank And A Number Of Silly Women.

The Pleasure Of The Senses Is Always Regulated In Accordance With The Imagination. Man Can Aspire To Felicity Only By Serving All The Whims Of His Imagination.

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.

Never Lose Sight Of The Fact That All Human Felicity Lies In Man's Imagination, And That He Cannot Think To Attain It Unless He Heeds All His Caprices. The Most Fortunate Of Persons Is He Who Has The Most Means To Satisfy His Vagaries.

Chimerical And Empty Being, Your Name Alone Has Caused More Blood To Flow On The Face Of The Earth Than Any Political War Ever Will. Return To The Nothingness From Which The Mad Hope And Ridiculous Fright Of Men Dared Call You Forth To Their Misfortune. You Only Appeared As A Torment For The Human Race. What Crimes Would Have Been Spared The World, If They Had Choked The First Imbecile Who Thought Of Speaking Of You.

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?

One Must Do Violence To The Object Of One's Desire; When It Surrenders, The Pleasure Is Greater.

The Completest Submissiveness Is Your Lot, And That Is All.

Every Principle Is A Judgment, Every Judgment The Outcome Of Experience, And Experience Is Only Acquired By The Exercise Of The Senses . . .

The Impossibility Of Outraging Nature Is The Greatest Anguish Man Can Know.

Beauty Belongs To The Sphere Of The Simple, The Ordinary, Whilst Ugliness Is Something Extraordinary, And There Is No Question But That Every Ardent Imagination Prefers In Lubricity, The Extraordinary To The Commonplace

Were He Supreme, Were He Mighty, Were He Just, Were He Good, This God You Tell Me About, Would It Be Through Enigmas And Buffooneries He Would Wish To Teach Me To Serve And Know Him?

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.

Cruelty, Very Far From Being A Vice, Is The First Sentiment Nature Injects In Us All. The Infant Breaks His Toy, Bites His Nurse's Breast, Strangles His Canary Long Before He Is Able To Reason; Cruelty Is Stamped In Animals, In Whom, As I Think I Have Said, Nature's Laws Are More Emphatically To Be Read Than In Ourselves; Cruelty Exists Amongst Savages, So Much Nearer To Nature Than Civilized Men Are; Absurd Then To Maintain Cruelty Is A Consequence Of Depravity. . . . Cruelty Is Simply The Energy In A Man Civilization Has Not Yet Altogether Corrupted: Therefore It Is A Virtue, Not A Vice.

I Write What I See, The Endless Procession To The Guillotine. Were All Lined Up, Waiting For The Crunch Of The Blade... The Rivers Of Blood Are Flowing Beneath Our Feet... Ive Been To Hell, Young Man, Youve Only Read About It.

There Are Thorns Everywhere, But Along The Path Of Vice, Roses Bloom Above Them.

Why Do You Complain Of Your Fate When You Could So Easily Change It?

If God Permits Virtue To Be Persecuted On Earth, It Is Not For Us To Question His Intentions. It May Be That His Rewards Are Held Over For Another Life, For Is It Not True As Written In Holy Scripture That The Lord Chastenenth Only The Righteous! And After All, Is Not Virtue It's Own Reward?

Can We Become Other Than What We Are?

We Monsters Are Necessary To Nature Also.

Let Not Your Zeal To Share Your Principles Entice You Beyond Your Borders.

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 To Suit Other People! My Manner Of Thinking Stems Straight From My Considered Reflections; It Holds With My Existence, With The Way I Am Made. It Is Not In My Power To Alter It; And Were It, I'd Not Do So.

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.

Conspiracy! Intrigue! A Rapidly Thickening Plot! Add Some Bestiality And A Lecherous Priest And I'd Say You Have The Beginnings Of A Beautiful Novel.

What I Should Like To Find Is A Crime The Effects Of Which Would Be Perpetual, Even When I Myself Do Not Act, So That There Would Not Be A Single Moment Of My Life Even When I Were Asleep, When I Was Not The Cause Of Some Chaos, A Chaos Of Such Proportions That It Would Provoke A General Corruption Or A Distubance So Formal That Even After My Death Its Effects Would Still Be Felt.

Sex Should Be A Perfect Balance Of Pain And Pleasure. Without That Symmetry, Sex Becomes A Routine Rather Than An Indulgence.

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.

Destruction, Hence, Like Creation, Is One Of Nature's Mandates.

Happiness Is Ideal, It Is The Work Of The Imagination.

Wild Imagination

Vivid Imagination

Prejudice Is The Sole Author Of Infamies: How Many Acts Are So Qualified By An Opinion Forged Out Of Naught But Prejudice!

Behold, My Love, Behold All That I Simultaneously Do: Scandal, Seduction, Bad Example, Incest, Adultery, Sodomy! Oh, Satan! One And Unique God Of My Soul, Inspire Thou In Me Something Yet More, Present Further Perversions To My Smoking Heart, And Then Shalt Thou See How I Shall Plunge Myself Into Them All!

Any Enjoyment Is Weakened When Shared.

Now I Beg Of You To Tell Me Whether I Must Love A Human Being Simply Because He Exists Or Resembles Me And Whether For Those Reasons Alone I Must Suddenly Prefer Him To Myself?

There Is A Kind Of Pleasure Which Comes From Sacrilege Or The Profanation Of The Objects Offered Us For Worship.

It Is Certain That Stealing Nourishes Courage, Strength, Skill, Tact, In A Word, All The Virtues Useful To A Republican System And Consequently To Our Own. Lay Partiality Aside, And Answer Me: Is Theft, Whose Effect Is To Distribute Wealth More Evenly, To Be Branded As A Wrong In Our Day, Under Our Government Which Aims At Equality? Plainly, The Answer Is No.

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.

It Is Certainly No Crime To Depict The Bizarre Ideas That Nature Inspires.

Either Kill Me Or Take Me As I Am, Because I'll Be Damned If I Ever Change.

Take Me As I Am

I Have Supported My Deviations With Reasons; I Did Not Stop At Mere Doubt; I Have Vanquished, I Have Uprooted, I Have Destroyed Everything In My Heart That Might Have Interfered With My Pleasure.

Nature Has Not Got Two Voices, You Know, One Of Them Condemning All Day What The Other Commands.

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!

Love Is Stronger Than Pride

The Mechanism That Directs Government Cannot Be Virtuous, Because It Is Impossible To Thwart Every Crime, To Protect Oneself From Every Criminal Without Being Criminal Too; That Which Directs Corrupt Mankind Must Be Corrupt Itself; And It Will Never Be By Means Of Virtue, Virtue Being Inert And Passive, That You Will Maintain Control Over Vice, Which Is Ever Active: The Governor Must Be More Energetic Than The Governed.

Imperious, Choleric, Irascible, Extreme In Everything, With A Dissolute Imagination The Like Of Which Has Never Been Seen, Atheistic To The Point Of Fanaticism, There You Have Me In A Nutshell, And Kill Me Again Or Take Me As I Am, For I Shall Not Change.

Take Me As I Am

At All Times, In Every Century, Every Age, There Has Been Such A Connection Between Despotism And Religion That It Is Infinitely Apparent And Demonstrated A Thousand Times Over, That In Destroying One, The Other Must Be Undermined, For The Simple Reason That The First Will Always Put The Law Into The Service Of The Second.

In An Age That Is Utterly Corrupt, The Best Policy Is To Do As Others Do.

God Strung Up His Own Son Like A Side Of Veal. I Shudder To Think What He Would Do To Me.

It Is Always By Way Of Pain One Arrives At Pleasure.

Conversation, Like Certain Portions Of The Anatomy, Always Runs More Smoothly When Lubricated.

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.

The Primary And Most Beautiful Of Nature's Qualities Is Motion

Virtue Can Procure Only An Imaginary Happiness; True Felicity Lies Only In The Senses, And Virtue Gratifies None Of Them.

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.

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.

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.

My Passions, Concentrated On A Single Point, Resemble The Rays Of A Sun Assembled By A Magnifying Glass: They Immediately Set Fire To Whatever Object They Find In Their Way.

What Is More Immoral Than War?

Those Laws, Being Forged For Universal Application, Are In Perpetual Conflict With Personal Interest, Just As Personal Interest Is Always In Contradiction With The General Interest. Good For Society, Our Laws Are Very Bad For The Individuals Whereof It Is Composed; For, If They One Time Protect The Individual, They Hinder, Trouble, Fetter Him For Three Quarters Of His Life.

They Declaim Against The Passions Without Bothering To Think That It Is From Their Flame Philosophy Lights Its Torch.

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.

Wolves Which Batten Upon Lambs, Lambs Consumed By Wolves, The Strong Who Immolate The Weak, The Weak Victims Of The Strong: There You Have Nature, There You Have Her Intentions, There You Have Her Scheme: A Perpetual Action And Reaction, A Host Of Vices, A Host Of Virtues, In One Word, A Perfect Equilibrium Resulting From The Equality Of Good And Evil On Earth.

The Majority Of Pop Stars Are Complete Idiots In Every Respect.

Is It Not Of The Imagination That The Sharpest Pleasures Arise?

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?

It Is Not The Opinions Or The Vices Of Private Individuals That Are Harmful To The State, But Rather The Behavior Of Public Figures.

It Has, Moreover, Been Proven That Horror, Nastiness, And The Frightful Are What Give Pleasure When One Fornicates. Beauty Is A Simple Thing; Ugliness Is The Exceptional Thing. And Fiery Imaginations, No Doubt, Always Prefer The Extraordinary Thing To The Simple Thing.

In Order To Know Virtue, We Must First Acquaint Ourselves With Vice.

Fear Not Lest Precautions And Protective Contrivances Diminish Your Pleasure: Mystery Only Adds Thereto.

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