You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite.
 W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915). copy citation

add
Author W. Somerset Maugham
Source Of Human Bondage
Topic pleasure heart
Date 1915
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/351/pg351-images.html

Context

“What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay."
Philip looked at him for a while steadily.
"Aren't you afraid?"
source