Quotes to inspire and reflect

The only shame is to have none.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

The eyes of men love to pluck / the blossoms; from the faded flowery they turn away.

Obviously, untangling sex from aggression and violence or the threat of it is going to take a very long time. And the process is going to be greatly resisted as a challenge to the very heart of male dominance and male centrality.

Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.

Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.

Some have held the Eye to be / The instrument of lechery, / More furtive than the Hand in low / And vicious venery—Not so! / Its rape is gentle, never more / Violent than a metaphor.

I’d call it love if love / didn’t take so many years / but lust too is a jewel.

When a lady’s erotic life is vexed / God knows what God is coming next.

The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.

The body searches for that which has injured the mind with love.

Most creatures have a vague belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind of transparent membrane, divides death from love; and that the profound idea of nature demands that the giver of life should die at the moment of giving.

Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance.

The old man, especially if he is in society, in the privacy of his thoughts, though he may protest the opposite, never stops believing that, through some singular exception of the universal rule, he can in some unknown and inexplicable way still make an impression on women.

Sex was invented as a biological instrument by (say) the green algae. But as an instrument in the ascent of man which is basic to his cultural evolution, it was invented by man himself.

Retrospectively, I would agree with Luis Bunuel that sex without sin is like an egg without salt.

What 1 seem to do, thought Herzog, is to inflame myself with my drama, with ridicule, failure, denunciation, distortion, to inflame myself voluptuously, esthetically, until I reach sexual climax. And that climax looks like a resolution and an answer to many “higher" problems.

She transformed his miseries into sexual excitements and, to give credit where it was due, turned his grief in a useful direction.

Desire is poison at lunch and wormwood at dinner; your bed is a stone, friendship is hateful and your fancy is always fixed on one thing.

Sexuality is the lyricism of the masses.

Nothing comes of severity if there be no leanings towards a change of heart. And if there be natural leanings towards a change of heart, what need for severity?

A sewer is a cynic. It tells All.

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.

If you hit a pony over the nose at the outset of your acquaintance, he may not love you, but he will take a deep interest in your movements ever afterwards.

No man is good enough to be another man’s master.

Slavery holds few men fast; the greater number hold fast their slavery.

Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.

Coercion created slavery, the cowardice of the slaves perpetuated it.

This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

Art thou less a slave by being loved and favoured by thy master? Thou art indeed well off, slave. Thy master favours thee; he will soon beat thee.

Whatever day / Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.

This is what it means / to be a slave: to be abused and bear it, / compelled by violence to suffer wrong.

I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.

To oblige persons often costs little and helps much.

He who is by nature not his own but another’s man, is by nature a slave.

The man who confers a favour would rather not be repaid in the same coin.

Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, / And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.

All service ranks the same with God— / With God, whose puppets, best and worst, / Are we: there is no last nor'first.

“Let me light my lamp," / says the star, / “And never debate / if it will help to remove the darkness.”

Solemnity is the shield of idiots.

Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clearsighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human.

There is ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about earnest, good men.

Oh, that ludicrous virile earnestness!

Every man is grave alone.

Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.

A sentimentalist is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.