Venus in Furs

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

— Leopold, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch

“Love knows no virtue, no merit; it loves and forgives and tolerates everything because it must. We are not guided by reason...””

— Leopold, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch

“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, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch

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

— Leopold, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch

“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, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch

“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, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch

“Desire followed the glance, pleasure followed desire””

— Leopold, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch

“The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped,deserves to be whipped.””

— Leopold, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch

“Why not?" she said, "and take note of what I am about to say to you. Never feel secure with the woman you love, for there are more dangers in woman's nature than you imagine. Women are neither as good as their admirers and defenders maintain, nor as bad as their enemies make them out to be. Woman's character is characterlessness. The best woman will momentarily go down into the mire, and the worst unexpectedly rises to deeds of greatness and goodness and puts to shame those that despise her. No woman is so good or so bad, but that at any moment she is capable of the most diabolical as well as of the most divine, of the filthiest as well as of the purest, thoughts, emotions, and actions. In spite of all the advances of civilization, woman has remained as she came out of the hand of nature. She has the nature of a savage, who is faithful or faithless, magnanimous or cruel, according to the impulse that dominates at the moment. Throughout history it has always been a serious deep culture which has produced moral character. Man even when he is selfish or evil always follows principles, woman never follows anything but impulses. Don't ever forget that, and never feel secure with the woman you love.””

— Leopold, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch