Venus In Furs Quotes:

Whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

source: Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch, Emil Marriot (1989). “Venus in Furs: A Novel ; Letters of Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch and Emilie Mataja”

topic: Wise, Wisdom, Venus In Furs

You modern men, you children of reason, cannot begin to appreciate love as pure bliss and divine serenity.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

source: Gilles Deleuze, Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch (1971). “Masochism”, Zone Books (NY)

topic: Children, Men, Appreciate, Pure Bliss, Venus In Furs

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

topic: Men, Treasure, Want, Venus In Furs

Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. Through man's passions, nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Wise, Women, Passion, Venus In Furs

You have corrupted my imagination and inflamed my blood...

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

source: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (2015). “Venus in Furs”, p.54, Cosimo Classics

topic: Blood, Imagination, My Imagination, Venus In Furs

Be then my slave, and know what it means to be delivered into the hands of a woman.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

source: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (2015). “Venus in Furs”, p.60, Cosimo Classics

topic: Mean, Hands, Slave, Venus In Furs

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

topic: Want, Pleasure, Drains, Mistreat, Venus In Furs

Never feel safe with the woman you love, for a woman's nature conceals more dangers than you think.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Thinking, Safe, Danger, Venus In Furs

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

topic: Beautiful, Real, Apples, Venus In Furs

You know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

source: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (2015). “Venus in Furs”, p.57, Cosimo Classics

topic: Glowing, Color, Arrogance, Venus In Furs

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

source: Gilles Deleuze, Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch (1971). “Masochism”, Zone Books (NY)

topic: Men, Long, Giving, Venus In Furs

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

topic: Our Love, Uniforms, Calm, Venus In Furs

I imagine that the goddess of Love has come down from Olympus to visit a mortal. So as not to die of cold in this modern world of ours, she wraps her sublime body in great heavy furs and warms her feet on the prostrate body of her lover. I imagine the favorite of this beautiful despot, who is whipped when his mistress grows tired of kissing him, and whose love only grows more intense the more he is trampled underfoot. I shall call the picture "Venus in Furs

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Beautiful, Tired, Kissing, Despots, Venus In Furs

Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will paint her, and go mad.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Hair, Mad, Soul, Venus In Furs

Pleasure alone makes existence worthwhile. A pleasure-seeker has a difficult time parting from life.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Difficult Times, Pleasure, Worthwhile, Venus In Furs

Desire followed the glance, pleasure followed desire

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Desire, Pleasure, Glances, Venus In Furs

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

topic: Venus In Furs

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

topic: Mind, Watches, Fur, Venus In Furs

Why become well-versed in science and the arts if not to impress a lovely little woman?

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Art, Lovely, Littles, Little Women, Venus In Furs

Love knows no virtue, no profit; it loves and forgives and suffers everything, because it must. It is not our judgment that leads us; it is neither the advantages nor the faults which we discover, that make us abandon ourselves, or that repel us. It is a sweet, soft, enigmatic power that drives us on. We cease to think, to feel, to will; we let ourselves be carried away by it, and ask not whither?

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

source: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (2015). “Venus in Furs”, p.75, Cosimo Classics

topic: Sweet, Thinking, Suffering, Carried Away, Venus In Furs

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

topic: Forgiving, Merit, Virtue, Venus In Furs

Above all else I am a dilettante in life.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Dilettantes, Venus In Furs

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

source: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (2015). “Venus in Furs”, p.49, Cosimo Classics

topic: Men, Imagination, Way, Courtesans, Venus In Furs

My heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Heart, Void, My Heart, Venus In Furs

Once I no longer exist as I am, out of what consideration then should I forgo anything? Should I belong to a man I don't love simply because I used to love him? No, I forgo nothing, I love any man who appeals to me and I make any man who loves me happy. Is that ugly? No, it is at least far more beautiful than my cruelly delighting in the tortures incited by my charms and my virtuously turning my back on the poor man who pines away for me. I am young, rich, and beautiful, and just as I am, I live cheerfully for pleasure and enjoyment.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Beautiful, Men, Ugly, Used To Love, Venus In Furs

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

topic: People, Firsts, Kind, Venus In Furs

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

topic: Men, Rights, Enemy, Venus In Furs

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

source: Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch, Emil Marriot (1989). “Venus in Furs: A Novel ; Letters of Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch and Emilie Mataja”

topic: Cat, Exercise, Animal, Venus In Furs, Animal Kingdom

The true comic muse is the one with tears running down under her laughing mask.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Running, Laughing, Tears, Venus In Furs

So,” Wanda cried, “a woman in furs is nothing more than a large cat, a charged electric battery?

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Venus In Furs

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

source: Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch, Emil Marriot (1989). “Venus in Furs: A Novel ; Letters of Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch and Emilie Mataja”

topic: Eye, Lakes, Mountain, Her Eyes, Mountain Lakes

Nature admits of no permanence in the relation between man and woman. It is only man's egoism that wants to keep woman like some buried treasure. All endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

source: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (2015). “Venus in Furs”, p.29, Cosimo Classics

topic: Marriage, Religious, Men, Egoism, Venus In Furs

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

topic: Fighting, Blood, People, Olympian Gods, Sumptuous

A slap in the face is more effective than ten lectures. It makes you understand very quickly.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

source: Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch, Emil Marriot (1989). “Venus in Furs: A Novel ; Letters of Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch and Emilie Mataja”

topic: Faces, Lectures, Slap In The Face, Venus In Furs

My husband's personality was filled with serenity and sunlight. Not even the incurable illness which fell upon him soon after our marriage could long cloud his brow. On the very night of his death he took me in his arms, and during the many months when he lay dying in his wheel chair, he often said jokingly to me: 'Well, have you already picked out a lover?' I blushed with shame. 'Don't deceive me,' he added on one occasion, 'that would seem ugly to me, but pick out an attractive lover, or preferably several. You are a splendid woman, but still half a child, and you need toys.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

source: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (2015). “Venus in Furs”, p.31, Cosimo Classics

topic: Love, Children, Husband, Venus In Furs

There is no describing the feeling of being mistreated by a successful rival in front of the woman you worship.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

topic: Successful, Feelings, Rivals, Mistreated, Venus In Furs

You are cold, while you yourself fan flames.

- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

source: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (2015). “Venus in Furs”, p.21, Cosimo Classics

topic: Flames, Fans, Cold, Venus In Furs

Now that I'm on Broadway, it's like NASA engineering with the costumes. I was very grateful for the slightly more high-tech ones in my show, 'Venus in Fur'; our costume designer Anita Yavich is kind of a genius.

- Nina Arianda

topic: Grateful, Engineering, Fur, Venus In Furs