Quotes to inspire and reflect

A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunderstroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.

Can there be worse sickness, than to know / that we are never well, nor can be so?

All diseases run into one, old age.

A boat to your average woman is just one more damn house to take care of, only it’s more uncomfortable, and the man orders her around like Captain Bligh, and she doesn’t trust the machinery or the plumbing, and she has to walk six blocks to buy groceries or to get the laundry done.

Diseases crucify the soul of man, attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, shrivel them up like old apples, make them so many anatomies.

A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint.

If wisdom were offered me with the proviso that I should keep it shut up and refrain from declaring it, I should refuse. There s no delight in owning anything unshared.

The man that blushes is not quite a brute.

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

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.

The only shame is to have none.

Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.

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

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.

Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Sexuality is the lyricism of the masses.

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

A sewer is a cynic. It tells All.

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.

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.

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?

All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

To oblige persons often costs little and helps much.

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.

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

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