Marquis de Sade Quotes

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster;' instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

Doubt, not self-reflection, comes from a destructive energy, and when it rears its head, I talk to it like a lunatic.

We did what our people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong.

In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.

Dishonesty is all about the small acts we can take and then think, 'No, this not real cheating.' So if you think that the main mechanism is rationalization, then what you come up with, and that's what we find, is that we're basically trying to balance feeling good about ourselves.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

People go down bad paths and they make bad decisions, but it's always justified in their head.

Human beings will justify anything.

I think we all go through those moments of self-doubt.

Sometimes we have the absolute certainty there's something inside us that's so hideous and monstrous that if we ever search it out we won't be able to stand looking at it. But it's when we're willing to come face to face with that demon that we face the angel.

Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.

I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?

I have a face like a washrag. I sing love songs and carry steel. I would rather die than cry. I can't stand hounds can't live without them. I hang my head against the white refrigerator and want to scream like the last weeping of life forever but I am bigger than the mountains.

I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.

What I felt then I feel now: the inexorable, unchanging interior hum of doubt and hope.

You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.

She could not bear to look at him just now. If she did, she might well slap him again. Or cry. Or kiss him. And never know which was right and which was wrong and which was madness.

he was trying to convince himself that he wasn't guilty.

Everything mattered and nothing did, and I was tired of trying to find out how both of those things were true. I was an itch that I'd scratched so hard I was bleeding. I had set out to do the impossible, whatever the impossible might be, only to find out that it was living with myself. Suicide became an expiration date, the day after which I no longer had to try.

My day-mind can endure / Upright, in hope, all it must undergo. / But O, afraid, unsure, / My night-mind waking lies too low, too low.

I have a great deal of experience in justifying myself to myself.

I have so little mastered the art of tranquil living that wherever I go I trail storm clouds of drama around me.

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.

The mind scolds the heart, which makes excuses and goes its own way.