Marquis de Sade — "Nothing that makes one hard is wicked and the only crime in the world is to refu…"
Nothing that makes one hard is wicked and the only crime in the world is to refuse oneself that pleasure.
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More from Marquis de Sade
"Happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime."
"What are all the pleasures of the senses compared to the infinite joys of the spirit?"
"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."
"My manner of thinking, I own, is not for all the world. Few will like it. It is too bold. It will not submit to the curb of any established system, nor will it be bound by any known code. It is free, …"
"There is no act so infamous that it cannot be excused by necessity."
About Marquis de Sade (1740-1814)
French aristocrat-libertine whose name became 'sadism' and whose novels test the limits of Enlightenment liberalism's 'do as you will' axiom. Closely associated with Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons dangereuses author). For an intellectual contrast, see Immanuel Kant, German Enlightenment philosopher of the categorical imperative — Sade and Kant published in the same decades; Kant's 'treat others as ends, never means' is the systematic ethical opposite of Sade's libertine instrumentalism — the two roads philosophy took out of Enlightenment freedom.
The standard scholarly entry points to Marquis de Sade's work: Maurice Blanchot (French literary critic) — Lautréamont and Sade (1949); Jacques Lacan (École freudienne de Paris) — Kant with Sade (1963 essay); Camille Paglia (University of the Arts Philadelphia) — Sexual Personae (1990) — extensive Sade chapters. These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Marquis de Sade.