Marquis de Sade

Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.

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 always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.

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

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

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.

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.

Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates.

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

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, which agitates her at all times, but this motion is simply a perpetual consequence of crimes, she conserves it by means of crimes only.

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