Top 55 Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch Quotes
#1. I take a cruel joy in seeing you tremble and writhe beneath my whip, and in hearing your groans and wails; I want to go on whipping without pity until you beg for mercy, until you lose your senses.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#2. A real apple is more beautiful than a painted one, and a live woman is more beautiful than a Venus of stone.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#3. You look at love, and especially woman, as something hostile, something against which you put up a defense, even if unsuccessfully. You feel that their power over you gives you a sensation of pleasurable torture, of pungent cruelty. This is a genuinely modern point of view.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#4. All about us the earth steamed; mists rose up toward heaven like clouds of incense; a shattered rainbow still hovered in the air.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#5. You modern men, you children of reason, cannot begin to appreciate love as pure bliss and divine serenity.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#6. We are faithful as long as we love, but you
demand faithfulness of a woman without love, and the giving of
herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel there
woman or man?
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#7. Shall I belong to one man whom I don't love, merely because I have once loved him? No, I do not renounce; I love everyone who pleases me, and give happiness to everyone who loves me.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#9. Until then I had lived as I had painted and versified - that is, I never got far beyond priming canvas, beyond penning an outline, a first act, a first stanza. There are simply people who start all sorts of things and yet never finish any of them. And that was the kind of person I was.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#11. You cannot deny that love lasts for only a brief moment, uniting two beings as a single being that is capable of only one thought, one sensation, one will.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#13. You view love and especially women ... as something hostile, something against which you defend yourself, although in vain, something whose power over you, however, you feel as a sweet torment, a prickling cruelty: this is truly a modern attitude.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#14. Despite all the progress of civilization, women have remained exactly as they emerged from the hand of Nature.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#15. You of the North in general take love too soberly and seriously. You talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#16. Woman, as Nature has created her and as she is currently reared by man, is his enemy and can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. She will be able to become his companion only when she has the same rights as he, when she is his equal in education and work.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#17. Woman's power lies in man's passion, and she knows how to use it, if man doesn't understand himself. He has only one choice: to be the tyrant over or the slave of woman.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#18. People who want to live like Olympian gods must have slaves whom they throw into their fishponds and gladiators who fight during their masters sumptuous banquets-and the pleasure-seekers never care if some blood splatters on them.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#20. So," Wanda cried, "a woman in furs is nothing more than a large cat, a charged electric battery?
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#21. Every woman has the instinct, the propensity to profit from her charms, and there's a lot to be said for giving oneself without love, without pleasure.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#25. It is merely the egoism of the man, who wants to bury a woman like a treasure. All attempts at using vows, contracts, and holy ceremonies have failed to bring permanence into the most changeable aspect of changeable human existence, namely love.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#26. The struggle of the spirit against the senses is the gospel of modern man. I do not wish to have any part in it.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#30. I really believe," said Wanda thoughtfully,"that your madness is nothing but a demonic, unsatisfied sensuality. Our unnatural way of life must generate such illnesses. Were you less virtuous, you would be completely sane.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#31. Cats exercise ... a magic influence upon highly developed men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces of the animal kingdom, these adorable, scintillating electric batteries have been the favorite animal of a Mohammed, Cardinal Richlieu, Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#32. Alas, woman is faithful as long as she loves, but you demand that she be faithful without love and give herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel then, woman or man?
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#35. Watch out, I have a large, very large fur, with which I could cover you up entirely, and I have a mind to catch you in it as in a net.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#36. That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and wor.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#37. It is merely the egoism of men, who wants to bury a woman like a treasure. All attempts at using vows, contracts, and holy ceremonies have failed to bring permanence into the most changeable aspect of changeable human existence, namely love. Can you deny that our Christina world is rotting?
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#38. The person who doesn't know how to subjugate will all too quickly feel the other's foot on the nape of his neck.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#39. Yet I am not writing with ordinary ink, but with red blood that drips
from my heart. All its wounds long scarred over have opened and it
throbs and hurts, and now and then a tear falls on the paper.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#40. She had wrapped her marble-like body in a huge fur, and rolled herself up trembling like a cat.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#41. Love knows no virtue, no merit; it loves and forgives and tolerates everything because it must. We are not guided by reason ...
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#44. I love her passionately with a morbid intensity; madly as one can only love a woman who never responds to our love with anything but an eternally uniform, eternally calm, stony smile.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#45. The presence of cats exercises such a magic influence upon highly organized men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces of the animal kingdom ... have been the favorite animal of a Mahommed, Cardinal Richelieu, Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#46. Pleasure alone makes existence worthwhile. A pleasure-seeker has a difficult time parting from life.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#48. Now her eyes meet mine like green lightning-they are green, these eyes of hers, whose power is so indescribable-green, but as are precious stones, or deep unfathomable mountain lakes.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#49. Place thy foot upon thy slave,
Oh thou, half of hell, half of dreams;
Among the shadows, dark and grave,
Thy extended body softly gleams.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#51. There is no describing the feeling of being mistreated by a successful rival in front of the woman you worship.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#52. Dangerous forces lie within me. You awaken them, and not to your advantage. You know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#53. Never feel safe with the woman you love, for a woman's nature conceals more dangers than you think.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#54. You have a curious way of arousing one's imagination, stimulating all one's nerves, and making one's pulses beat faster. You put an aureole on vice, provided only if it is honest. Your ideal is a daring courtesan of genius. Oh, you are the kind of man who will corrupt a woman to her very last fiber.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
#55. If I can't enjoy the full and total happiness of love, then I want to drain its torments, its tortures to the dregs; then I want the woman I love to mistreat me, betray me, and the more cruelly the better. That too is a pleasure.
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
