Volume 13, Issue 1: Verbatim

Quotations on Sex

Various Saints and Clever Pagans

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.

I want to tell you a terrific story about oral contraception. I asked this girl to sleep with me and she said, "no."

Mankind declares this with one deafening voice: that sex may be ecstatic so long as it is also restricted. It is not necessary even that the restriction should be reasonable; it is necessary that it should restrict. That is the beginning of all purity; and purity is the beginning of all passion.

Wisest Solomon among his gravest Proverbs countenances a kind of ravishment ... in the entertainment of wedded leisures; and in the Song of Songs ... sings of a thousand raptures between those two lovely ones far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment. By these instances, and more which might be brought, we may imagine how indulgently God provided against man's loneliness.

This is one of the miracles of love; it gives - to both, but perhaps especially to the woman - a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

Thou not only unitest unto thyself a friend and comfort for society, but also a companion for pleasure.

The idea of female beauty is the erotic stimulus for women as well as men ... i.e., a lascivious man thinks about women's bodies, a lascivious woman thinks about her own. What a world we live in!

The Puritan doctrine of sex was a watershed in the cultural history of the West. The Puritans devalued celibacy, glorified companionate marriage, affirmed married sex as both necessary and pure, established the ideal of wedded romantic love, and exalted the role of the wife.

But at some level consent to inequality, nay, delight in inequality, is an erotic necessity.

Free love is the direct enemy of freedom. It is the most obvious of all the bribes that can be offered by slavery.