Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

She stopped. "I am beginning to enjoy it," she said, "but enough for to-day. I am beginning to feel a demonic curiosity to see how far your strength goes. 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. You have awakened dangerous elements in my being. But now get up."

"Venus with the Mirror" in the Dresden Gallery.

"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?

Yet I am not writing with ordinary ink, but with red blood that drips from my heart.

Friend Severin; you can lie to others, but you don't quite suc‍

Friend Severin; you can lie to others, but you don't quite succeed any longer in lying to yourself—