Daily Inspiration Quote by Marquis de Sade

De Sade smuggles a defense of depravity into what sounds like a sober observation about human nature. He starts with a near-Aristotelian premise: imitation is our default setting. Then he narrows it, sharpening the blade: the "sensitive man" doesn’t just copy manners or virtues; he tries to become the beloved. Love, in this framing, is less moral uplift than self-erasure, a kind of voluntary ventriloquism. That move matters because it relocates responsibility. If desire is mimetic, then vice is contagious, and the libertine can pose as an instrument rather than an agent.

The last line is the real provocation: "only by imitating the vices of others" have "my misfortunes" arrived. It reads like confession, but it’s also litigation. De Sade, perpetually entangled with prisons, courts, and scandal, hints at a familiar plea: I’m not uniquely monstrous, just unusually honest about how society works. The subtext is an accusation aimed outward. If his acts are "imitations", then the culture that condemns him also authored him. He becomes a bad mirror held up to polite hypocrisy.

Stylistically, the sentence performs what it argues: it mimics moral philosophy while delivering contraband. "Sensitive" is a trap word, laundering predation through tenderness. And "misfortunes" coyly reframes consequence as bad luck, not harm done. De Sade’s intent isn’t redemption; it’s to destabilize the reader’s confidence in moral autonomy, suggesting that even our vices arrive socially dressed, learned in the very rooms that later demand punishment.