Detraction

“ Ay, an you had any eye behind you, you might see more detraction at your heels than fortunes before you. ”

“ These have conquered me—the divinity of the instruction, and the power of the Word: for as a skilled serpent-charmer lures the terrible reptile from his den and causes it to flee, so the Word drives the fearful passions of our sensual nature from the very recesses of the soul; first driving forth lust, through which every ill is begotten—hatreds, strife, envy, emulations, anger, and such like. Lust being once banished, the soul becomes calm and serene. ”

“ Nay, I felt the 'clear keen joyance' of the lark that loves, but 'ne'er knew love's sad satiety.' Hitherto, the pleasure that women had given me had always jarred upon my nerves. It was, in fact, 'a thing wherein we feel there is a hidden want.' Lust was now the overflowing of the heart and of the mind—the pleasurable harmony of all the senses. ”

“ The lust of the satyr, the affectionate glow of the domestic habitué, the rare exalted passion of the lover, the cold, clear attraction of the intellectual platonist, the will to possession of the sex-maniac, the will to voluptuous cruelty of the sex-pervert, the maternal instinct, the race-instinct, the instinct towards fetish-worship, the instinct towards art, towards nature, towards the ultimate mystery—all these things have been called "love" that we should follow them and pursue them ”

“ That is what we all, even the grossest of us, in our heart of hearts are seeking. Lust seeks it; Love creates it; the miracle of Faith finds it—but nothing less, neither truth nor wisdom nor morality nor knowledge, neither progress nor reaction, can quench the thirst we feel. ”

“ I recognise with horror that infernal fascination which took from me the use of my reason, and which was not love even,—no, I yielded to the grossest, most degrading passion which can lower man to the level of a brute, to that passion which, to my shame and to yours, I desire to stigmatise aloud as lust, madame! ”

“ Listen, in order to feel all, all the pleasure that I can give you, you must forget yourself for an instant, lose yourself, melt into one thought only, the thought of sensual love, of fleshly rapture and mad delight. No matter what way I may attack you, no matter with what rage and force, you must not budge or give an answering movement. Lie quite still and receive my caresses and kisses without returning them. ”

“ I knew all the warning signals—the creeping in of uncontrollable thoughts—the brain pictures—the quickening of mind and body—then the grip of the madness. All I could do at such times was to collect a number of things sufficiently beautiful to satisfy my lust, and lock myself in to an orgy of destruction. ”

“ This sphere of lust, I say, then, does not arise from the body, nor from the influence of the body on the soul. It arises from our neglect of our spiritual needs. This lust, this desire proclaims a divine life within, which demands activity corresponding to our real natures; and we can never get peace and happiness until those real demands of our natures are supplied. I appeal to all pleasure-seekers whether this is not true. You have heard it argued whether there be more pleasure in anticipation than in participation. The world’s pleasures are always in the future, never in the present. ”

“ The passion I experience is too powerful, too vast, to descend even to the falsehoods to which we should both be reduced, if we sought the pleasures of a vulgar love. No, no, to belong to him in the open gaze of day, in the face of the world, to bear his name nobly and proudly—or bury my unhappy love in the depths of my heart. ”

“ The lusts they tarr on me crouch down and fawn
And snarl to be so fearful of their prey.
I see men's faces grin with helpless lust
About me; crooked hands reach out to please
Their hot nerves with the flower of my skin;
I see the eyes imagining enjoyment,
The arms twitching to seize me, and the minds
Inflamed like the glee-kindled hearts of fiends.
And through the world the fawning, fawning lusts
Hound me with worship of a ravenous yearning:
And I am weary of maddening men with beauty. ”

“ Listen now to those consequences that spring from the attributes of Goodness, Passion, and Darkness. Contentment, the satisfaction that arises from joy, certainty, intelligence, and memory,—these are the consequences born of the attribute of Goodness. I shall now mention the consequences of Passion and Darkness. Desire, wrath, error, cupidity, stupefaction, fear, and fatigue, belong to the attribute of Passion. Cheerlessness, grief, discontent, vanity, pride, and wickedness, all belong to Darkness. ”

“ It is a pity and a mistake; because we fail to appreciate many of the warning signals which the Spirit of God stations along our path. Any inordinate desire for sensual and pleasurable excitement, whether fixed on a right object, or directed towards a wrong one, comes under the denomination of "lust." Strong and ill-regulated desire or passion, in whatever direction it expresses itself, will work our ruin, and not that alone of impurity, to which this old word is now specially confined. ”

“ It is not thus with passions born of desire. The attraction which has roused them can, in contempt of all dignity, rearouse them suddenly, the nerves being exclusively concerned in their manifestation. ”

“ See how its owner prowls restlessly about; continually changing his position, but ever keeping his watchful eyes upon that voluptuous woman who, surrendering her soul to the lascivious pleasing of opportunity, is reeling, gliding, and yielding in the clutch of her partner—her drunken catholicity of desire, her long libidinous reaches of imagination, the glib and facile assent of her emotions, figured in every movement, and visible to every eye. ”

“ There is enough to cool the flames of lust, to abate the height of pride, to appease the itch of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. ”

“ And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other affections, of desire, and pain, and pleasure, which are held to be inseparable from every action—in all of them poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue. ”

“ The sensualist's affections are imaginary, whimsical, and unreal, even as his pleasures; falsehood, envy, ambition, hypocrisy, malice, and hate steal his treasures all away; and, stripped of its exteriors, what a spectacle is error that must lose its own basis to unloose the sandals of Truth! To ascertain what is our progress, we have only to learn what is our God, where are our affections, what do they acknowledge and obey. ”

“ If, in all those attentions and eagernesses with which we see you occupied, to manage either the interests of your worldly affairs, or the preservation of a vain beauty, there is not either as much forwardness as may amount to the crime of illegal ambition, or complaisance for yourself, and desire of pleasing, as may sully your heart with the guilt of sensuality? ”

“ But as man has needs pertaining to his physical, intellectual, moral, and religious natures, and as there are pleasures pertaining to the proper supplying of them, man’s lusts may lead him to act in either the physical, intellectual, or moral and religious departments; and, as already remarked, the grossness of the lust will depend upon the plan and the means by which it seeks gratification. Reflection will demonstrate that the different lusts, as they are called, differ not in the primary impulse, but differ in the manner of seeking gratification. ”

“ In pleasure they comprehend malevolence—that is, pleased at another’s misfortune—delight, boastfulness, and the like. To lust they associate anger, fury, hatred, enmity, discord, wants, desire, and other feelings of that kind. ”

“ So eagerly they cling in Venus' bonds, Whilst melt away their members, overcome By violence of delight. But when at last Lust, gathered in the thews, hath spent itself, There come a brief pause in the raging heat— But then a madness just the same returns And that old fury visits them again, When once again they seek and crave to reach They know not what, all powerless to find The artifice to subjugate the bane. ”

“ It is now taught, not only that physical passion stands for, or rather is, the Love of which it forms only a part; but that the fire of sudden desire is the only true, or natural, expression of love itself. ”

“ Sensuality had always been for her the one unpardonable sin, and sensuality of this kind, turning the power of sex into a mere motive for squalid pleasure-seeking, filled her with a shuddering disgust. ”

“ What is the use of the enjoyment of pleasures in this body, which is assailed by lust, hatred, greed, delusion, fear, anguish, jealousy, separation from what is loved, union with what is not loved, hunger, old age, death, illness, grief, and other evils? ”

“ If you have any fresh motive for dreading such an occurrence, you are quite right, but if it is only a vague, groundless fear, my love, why should you deprive yourself of a real and innocent pleasure? ”

“ I acknowledge, with shame and regret, that I was accustomed to regard the physical and sensual consequences of the sexual relation as realities, and every thing intellectual, disinterested, and heroic, which enthusiasts connect with it as idle dreams. ”

“ Accordingly, therefore, the philosophers think fit to define the most generic passions thus: lust, as desire disobedient to reason; fear, as weakness disobedient to reason; pleasure, as an elation of the spirit disobedient to reason. ”

“ It is true that the strong passions which are modified or characterized by the sexual impulse, excite the imagination and impel the mind to sublime exertions; but the sole means of either obtaining or preserving such impulsion is, to shun the indulgence of pleasure in early life, and its waste at later periods. ”

“ We so managed matters that we all came together or nearly so, and the women followed suit at the last final crisis, which was ushered in with wild cries of lust, and then a sudden overpowering silence fell on all as they lay panting in all the after-joys that follow the ecstatic discharge of life's essence. ”

“ Experience teaches us that painful affections are those which have the most attraction for us, and thus that the pleasure we take in an affection is precisely in an inverse ratio to its nature. It is a phenomenon common to all men, that sad, frightful things, even the horrible, exercise over us an irresistible seduction, and that in presence of a scene of desolation and of terror we feel at once repelled and attracted by two equal forces. ”

“ And their manifestation will be according to the plane of the lust and the means adopted for its gratification. But while lusts differ thus in their modes of expression, as well as in their primary and secondary effects upon the individual, they are all alike in their inception, and in the end sought to be attained. They all have their beginning in the neglect of some need, which creates a sense of lack, and they all seek self-gratification irrespective of such need; so that all lust, in whatever plane found, is alike in its origin and end. All are fatal to true happiness. ”

“ But there are other influences originating in the mind, leading the individual to seek gratification in horse-racing, gaming, sexual indulgences, etc. In ten thousand instances the stimulating influences to various acts arise in the mind, and form a part of the mind. In the majority of instances the body is simply made the instrument for the gratification of lustful desires. Did the usual habits of thought permit, it might be demonstrated, in various ways, that lustful desires originate in the impure condition of the spirit. ”

“ But it would be false to our deepest experience to say that love implies pleasure and that malice implies pain. As a matter of fact, they both imply a thrilling and ecstatic pleasure, in proportion as the equilibrium between them, the balance of the wavering struggle between them, is interrupted by the relative victory of either the one or the other. ”

“ O enchantment of the senses when the surcharge of thought comes not to mar physical intoxication! O enchantment of prostitutes, seen thus as dispensers of pleasure free from disquiet of heart! No asking whether or how one loves or is loved, no measuring of sensation with an ideal type of feeling that is perceived, and striven after, and that never can be felt! ”

“ It is the bond of our existence; it is the wheel of our fortune; it is our guiding star; and it may be our loadstone to crime and premature death. Passions leading to love, true and gentle, or jealousy, hate, revenge, murder and suicide, all hinge on circumstances connected, directly or indirectly, with the sexual. ”

“ Sexual instinct remains the centre round which everything revolves; nothing exists but through it. Character, imagination, vanity, imitation, fashion, time, place, and many other individual circumstances or social influences give to love—as emotion or passion—an unlimited plasticity. ”

“ She learns that every touch of that chain is like the thrilling of a nerve; and she thus acquires a power peculiar to herself, of distinguishing exactly between the links which thrill with pleasure, and those which only thrill with pain. ”

“ The kind of craving excitement, which follows on sensation, and causes the delusion of self and the lust of life—creating either delight in the objects that present themselves, or an eager desire to supply a felt want—this eager yearning thirst growing into sensuality, desire of future life, or love of the present world, is the origin of all suffering. ”

“ If lust is overcome, ambition takes its place. If ambition is despised, anger exasperates, pride puffs up, wine-bibbing entices; envy breaks concord; jealousy cuts friendship; you are constrained to curse, which the divine law forbids ”

“ Wherefore, touching illusions and impressions, as also strong emotions of love, hatred, jealousy, or revenge, these nerve and brain sensations are easily conveyed from one human subject to another by Suggestion. ”

“ Thus much of Ambition which should have succeeded something I was saying of Love.
Love, in the interpretation of the Envious, is Softness; in the Wicked, good men suspect it for Lust; and in the Good, some spiritual men have given it the name of Charity: And these are but terms to this which seems a more consider'd definition; that indefinite Love is Lust; and Lust when it is determin'd to one, is Love ”