From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia - 'Sadism is not a
name finally given to a practice as old as Eros; it is a massive
cultural fact which appeared precisely at the end of the
eighteenth century, and which constitutes one of the greatest
conversions of Western imagination: unreason transformed into
delirium of the heart, madness of desire, the insane dialogue of
love and death in the limitless presumption of appetite."
--Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization - "Sadism demands a
story, depends on making something happen, forcing a change in
another person, a battle of will and strength, victory/defeat."
(Laura Mulvey, 1975, 29). - "Mes fantasmes sado-érotiques, je
n'en ai nullement honte, je les mets en scène: la vie
fantasmatique est ce que l'être humain doit revendiquer le plus
hautement". --Alain Robbe-Grillet - There is a suggestion by
Mario Praz in The Romantic Agony that what Blake, De Sade,
Nietzsche, Swinburne, Dostoyevsky, Gide, essentially have in
common is that they were all sadists,