Cruelty, very far from being ...

Cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the first sentiment Nature injects in us all. The infant breaks his toy, bites his nurse's breast, strangles his canary long before he is able to reason; cruelty is stamped in animals, in whom, as I think I have said, Nature's laws are more emphatically to be read than in ourselves; cruelty exists amongst savages, so much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd then to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. . . . Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.
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 Marquis de Sade

Quotes from the same author

Certain souls seem hard because they are capable of strong feelings, and they sometimes go to rather extreme lengths; their apparent unconcern and cruelty are but ways, known only to themselves, of feeling more strongly than others.
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 Marquis de Sade
If the objects who serve us feel ecstacy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired. The idea of seeing another person experience the same pleasure reduces one to a kind of equality which spoils the unutterable charms that come from despotism.
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 Marquis de Sade
Your service will be arduous, it will be painful and rigorous, and the slightest delinquencies will be requited immediately with corporal and afflicting punishments; hence, I must recommend to you prompt exactness, submissiveness, and total self-abnegation that you be enabled to heed naught but our desires; let them be your laws, fly to do their bidding, anticipate them, cause them to be born.
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 Marquis de Sade
'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.
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 Marquis de Sade
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.
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 Marquis de Sade