My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.
Marquis De SadeRead
Behold, my love, behold all that I simultaneously do: scandal, seduction, bad example, incest, adultery, sodomy! Oh, Satan! one and unique God of my soul, inspire thou in me something yet more, present further perversions to my smoking heart, and then shalt thou see how I shall plunge myself into them all!
Interpretation
This quote expresses a passionate and tumultuous relationship with love, desire, and moral transgression.
In this quote, the speaker, influenced by the provocative and controversial philosophy of Marquis De Sade, conveys a deep and tumultuous relationship with love that openly embraces scandalous and immoral acts. The call to a dark deity highlights an intense yearning for deeper and more forbidden experiences, illustrating the complexity of human desire and the willingness to confront societal taboos in the pursuit of personal passion.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the complexities of love and morality in a literature class.
My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.
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.
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.
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?
The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.
Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!
For suddenly, I saw you there And through foggy London town The sun was shining everywhere.
Fate,Time,Occasion,Chance, and Change? To these All things are subject but eternal love.
...The girls chirped and chatted like uncaged warblers. They were delirious with joy... Intoxications of life’s morning! Enchanted years! The wing of a dragonfly trembles! Oh, reader, whoever you may be, do you have such memories? Have you walked in the underbrush, pushing aside branches for the charming head behind you? Have you slid laughing, down some slope wet with rain, with the woman you loved?
I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be — that proves I love him better than myself.
The essential building block is...the true love that is impossible to define for those who have never experienced it and unnecessary to define for those who have.
Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness.
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