Marquis de Sade quotes

Marquis de Sade was a French nobleman, writer, and philosopher, notorious for his libertine sexuality and controversial works. His writings explored themes of extreme freedom, eroticism, and cruelty, challenging moral and social norms. He has become synonymous with the concept of sadism and continues to provoke debate about sexuality and censorship. Here are 98 of his quotes:

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

Marquis de Sade

Why do you complain of your fate when you could so easily change it?

Marquis de Sade

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

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

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.

Marquis de Sade

The law which attempts a man's life [capital punishment] is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime-for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold.

Marquis de Sade

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.

Marquis de Sade

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

"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

We must pity those who have such singular tastes, but never insult them: their lack is a lack in nature. They are no more the masters of arriving in this world with bizarre tastes that we are the masters of arriving bowlegged or shapely. Besides, is a man saying something disagreeable to you when he reveals his desire to enjoy you? Absolutely not! He's paying you a compliment!

Marquis de Sade

It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.

Marquis de Sade

In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.

Marquis de Sade

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

Marquis de Sade

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

Marquis de Sade

Oh, you, who are clutching the sickle, give the tree of superstition its final stroke. Do not be content with hacking off the branches. Tear out by its roots a plant with such noxious effects.

Marquis de Sade

Benevolence is more a vice of pride than a true virtue of the soul.

Marquis de Sade

Modesty is an old-fashioned virtue, which, given your charms, you must certainly do without.

Marquis de Sade

After demonstrating that theism is unsuitable for a republican government, I find it crucial to prove that French morals are likewise inappropriate.

Marquis de Sade

Let nobody doubt that religions are the cradles of despotism. The first of all despots was a priest; the first king and the first emperor of Rome, Numa and Augustus, both allied themselves with the priesthood; Constantine and Clovis were abbots rather than sovereigns; Heliopolis was the priest of the sun. In all times, in all centuries, despotism and religion have been so thoroughly interconnected that, as is easily demonstrated, in destroying one you undermine the other, for the profound reason that each will help the other to gain power.

Marquis de Sade

What good are laws without a religion? We need a religion so distant to that of Rome that we can never return to the religion of Rome. In this century we are furthermore convinced that religion must be based on morality and not morality on religion. Hence we require a reliigion that is faithful to morals, that is virtually their further development, their necessary consequence, and that, in uplifting the soul, can perpetually keep it on the acme of that precious freedom which is now its unique idol.

Marquis de Sade

A person must have lost his mind to believe in God. The product of either fear or weakness, this abominable phantom, Eugenie, is useless for the system of the earth, It would even be infallibly harmful. You see, its will, which must be just, could never ally itself with the injustice essential to the laws of nature. It would constantly have to wish for goodness, which nature desires only as compensation for the evil that serves its laws. It would have to act continuously, and nature, one of whose laws is that perpetual motion, could only rival and perpetually resist it.

Marquis de Sade

You charming sex, you will be free; like men, you will enjoy all the delights that nature has made your obligations; you will not have to be constrained in any pleasure. Must the more divine section of humanity be clapped in irons by the less divine section? Ah, smash those chains-nature wants you to smash them! You should have no other limits than your leanings, no other laws than your cravings, no other morals than nature; stop languishing in those barbaric prejudices that caused your charms to fade and imprisoned the godly surges of your hearts.

Marquis de Sade