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
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?
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote questions the strength of one's beliefs and the stability of their convictions, suggesting that true beliefs should withstand opposition.
Marquis De Sade's quote prompts deep reflection on the nature of convictions and belief systems. It challenges individuals to consider whether their beliefs are robust enough to face opposition, and whether the existence of differing views exposes any weakness in those beliefs. It suggests that if one's faith or convictions are true, they should be able to withstand scrutiny, while also hinting at the struggle between contrasting ideologies and the significance of doubt in the quest for truth.
Themes
ConvictionsBeliefsOppositionFaithTruthPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate setting to emphasize the robustness of one's beliefs.
More from Marquis De Sade
All quotes βSo 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 SadeRead
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.
Marquis De SadeRead
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.
Marquis De SadeRead
Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!
Marquis De SadeRead
Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.
Marquis De SadeRead
Similar quotes
I believe it was God's will that we should come back, so that men might know the things that are in the world, since, as we have said in the first chapter of this book, no other man, Christian or Saracen, Mongol or pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice.
Marco PoloRead
Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire - in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?
Lord ByronRead
To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.
Ludwig FeuerbachRead
When a golden girl can win Prayer from out the lips of sin, When the barren almond bears, And a little child gives away its tears, Then shall all the house be still And peace come to Canterville.
Oscar WildeRead
One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude. Their . . . paths [are] diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.
Alexis De TocquevilleRead
The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.
J. G. BallardRead