S. O' Sade Quotes

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?

I've been to Hell. You've only read about it.

There are thorns everywhere, but along the path of vice, roses bloom above them.

Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

The primary and most beautiful of nature's qualities is motion

Sensual excess drives out pity in man.

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.

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

All the cliches of glamorous sophistication have little appeal to me. Do I want to live the British version of 'Dynasty?' No thanks!

When you play arenas you can create whatever you want. At a theater the height of the stage and the limitations of the theater can make you feel more separate from the audience.

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

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

In an age that is utterly corrupt, the best policy is to do as others do.

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

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

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

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

The majority of pop stars are complete idiots in every respect.

Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders.

There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship.

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.

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

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

It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women.

Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!

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

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.

I have no technical training and am completely uneducated in music.

What is more immoral than war?

Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?

It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.

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?

The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.

The horror of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation.

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.

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

I'm not shy or reclusive. I just spend my time with people rather than journalists.

I always see myself as much more of a musician than a celebrity.

I am a reluctant celebrity, in some ways.

I want to be the victim of his errors.

Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses . . .

Fear not lest precautions and protective contrivances diminish your pleasure: mystery only adds thereto.

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.

Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all.

Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?

It is certainly no crime to depict the bizarre ideas that nature inspires.

I don't know what the heart is, not I: I only use the word to denote the mind's frailties.

Humane sentiments are baseless, mad, and improper; they are incredibly feeble; never do they withstand the gainsaying passions, never do they resist bare necessity.