- Born
- Died
- Birth nameCount Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade
- Nicknames
- Monsieur Le Six
- The Divine Marquis
- Height5′ 6¼″ (1.68 m)
- Born a rich nobleman, Marquis being his title rather than his birth name, De Sade gradually became a decadent libertine among the French society of Louis XVI. A liberally educated iconoclast, he wrote prose and verse, and specialized in testing the limits of decency, breaking taboos and shocking the aristocracy, often with sordid details drawn from real life. He was thought to have committed much of the perversions and debauchery he had written about. He was incarcerated in an asylum shortly before the French Revolution. After a decade of feverish creativity, he willingly gave up writing and lived his remaining years in uneventful calm. De Sade has been portrayed in movie and TV by Daniel Auteuil, Stuart Devenie, Keir Dullea, Robert Englund, Klaus Kinski, Patrick Magee, Nick Mancuso, Geoffrey Rush, Brother Theodore, and Conrad Veidt.
- IMDb mini biography by: QQQ-2
- SpouseRenee Pelagie de Montreuil(May 17, 1763 - December 2, 1814) (his death, 3 children)
- Three children: Louis Marie de Sade (born 27 August 1767), Donatien Claude Armand de Sade (born 27 June 1769), and Madeline Laure de Sade (born 7 April 1771).
- A cast of his skull is on display in the Museé de L'homme is Paris, France.
- His books were burned for being 'obscene.'
- The term 'sadism' has its origins in his name. The term, which is defined as 'deriving sexual pleasure from inflicting pain,' was coined by German psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing in his book 'Psychopathia Sexualis' in 1886, 72 years after the Marquis' death.
- Narrowly escaped being sentenced to the guillotine.
- Imperious, angry, furious, extreme in all things, with a disturbance in the moral imagination unlike any the world has ever known - there you have me in a nutshell: and one more thing, kill me or take me as I am, for I will not change.
- Tolerance is the virtue of the weak.
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