One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.
Marquis de Sade

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

Religions are the cradles of despotism.
Marquis de Sade

Sensual excess drives out pity in man.
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

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

So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
Marquis de Sade

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

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

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

The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.
Marquis de Sade

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

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

There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.
Marquis de Sade

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

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

'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.
Marquis de Sade

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

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

Variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust.
Marquis de Sade