Sensual appetite

“ Although the novelty of her charms has gone by, the certainty of having cropped her virgin rose has created a lasting interest in my bosom, which the dissolving lustre and modest, bashful expression of her eyes daily increases—indeed her charms frequently entice me from the arms of another beauty, whom I may say for these last two months I have continually enjoyed without me least abatement of my ardour—on the contrary, my appetite seems to increase by what I feed on. ”

“ This is only a limited application of the term. Properly, everything is sensual that pertains to the senses. One may be exceedingly sensual, and yet not given to luxuriousness, gluttony or wine-bibbing. ”

“ Sexual activity, we see, is not merely a bald propagative act, nor, when propagation is put aside, is it merely the relief of distended vessels. It is something more even than the foundation of great social institutions. It is the function by which all the finer activities of the organism, physical and psychic, may be developed and satisfied. Nothing, it has been said, is so serious as lust—to use the beautiful term which has been degraded into the expression of the lowest forms of sensual pleasure—and we have now to add that nothing is so full of play as love. ”

“ Love, with all that appertains to it, belongs as such to our mind, that is, to the activity of our cerebral hemispheres, but it is produced there by a secondary irradiation from the sexual appetite, which alone concerns us at present. ”

“ For call it Love as they will, it is naught but Lust, as low an instinct or habit as that of craving for strong liquor or any wherewithall to still the insatiate demands of uncontrolled appetite. Love hath naught to do with Lust,—for Love is a Principle, not a Passion. ”

“ But attention to sweet scents is a bait which draws us into sensual lust. For the licentious man is led on every hand, both by his food, his bed, his conversation, by his eyes, his ears, his jaws, and by his nostrils too. As oxen are pulled by rings and ropes, so is the voluptuary by fumigations and unguents, and the sweet scents of crowns. ”

“ Their attachment had been but physical; their affection only make-believe—to colour fact, and suffuse reality with romance. Only that insatiable appetite for life had really led her wrong; that passion for physical vitality ”

“ In mere tender emotion not sexual, there is nothing but the sense of touch to gratify, unless we assume the occult magnetic influences.... In a word, our love pleasures begin and end in sensual contact. Touch is both the alpha and omega of affection. As the terminal and satisfying sensation, the ne plus ultra, it must be a pleasure of the highest degree.... Why should a more lively feeling grow up towards a fellow-being than towards a perennial fountain? ”

“ 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. ”

“ I discovered that it was lawful to have some kinds of appetite, and to take pleasure in food, exercise, sleep, warmth, cold water, hot water, the smell of flowers, and quite unlawful so much as to think of, or to admit to myself the existence of other kinds of appetite. I discovered, in fact, that love was a shameful thing, that if one was in love one concealed it from the world, and, above all the world, from the object of one's love. ”

“ Why some people look askance at passion is because they are confusing it with sensuality. Sex love without passion is a poor, lifeless thing. Sensuality, on the other hand, is on a level with gluttony—a physical excess—detached from sentiment, chivalry, or tenderness. ”

“ Soon she was entirely naked; then their arms wreathed around each other's necks, they writhed with thrilling joy, rubbing their limbs together, murmuring with pleasure, cooing like two amorous doves, and sucking each other's tongues, rapturously intoxicated with the scent of each other's body.
And you can understand their passionate delight, for they were at the age when life is flush with lust, and the flesh melts away like wax. ”

“ How intoxicating, indeed, how penetrating—like a most precious wine—is that love which is the sexual transformed by the magic of the will into the emotional and spiritual! And what a loss, on the merest ground of prudence and the economy of pleasure, is the unbridled waste along physical channels! ”

“ And so, though we were to regard the pleasures of sight merely as the highest of sensual pleasures, and though they were of rare occurrence, and, when occurring, isolated and imperfect, there would still be a supernatural character about them, owing to their permanence and self-sufficiency, where no other sensual pleasures are permanent or self-sufficient. ”

“ There is the way of sensuality. Those who walk in it take appetite as their guide. Their main object in life is to gratify their physical desires. Some of them are delicate, and some of them are coarse. ”

“ Oh, the exquisite, the ecstatic delight of this first awakening into the manhood of feeling!—when the passion-flower is just opening—when the nerves are troubled, for the first time, by the sensibilities of sex—when the blooming cheek, the rosy lip, the inviting glance, and the happily-moulded rotundities of the female form, become, for the first time, an object of fearful, of indescribable, of trembling interest! ”

“ Each day is divided for them into a hundred little sensual experiences—a passing look, a flitting smile, an accidental contact of the knees—and each year into a hundred such days, in which the sensual experience constitutes the ever-flowing, life-giving and quickening source of their existence. ”

“ The most entrancing delights and consummate enjoyments are of the emotive order, ideal, abstract, and pure, so inspiring that they overpower the grosser sensual pleasures and diffuse their own sweet chastity and refining influence over all the processes of life. ”

“ The occasional experience, often only the dream of such a love, sensible to the finest shades of the soul, to the most delicate vibrations of the senses—of a love which is an all comprehensive tenderness, an all embracing intimacy—has already raised the erotic demands and the erotic existence of thousands of men and women to a sphere of more infinite longing, more fervid chastity than that of their contemporaries. ”

“ The sensuous feelings engendered by sun-bathing, of the press of the earth under one when lying down in a field or under a tree, the soft beauty of the moon on a hazy night, the warmth and coziness of a fireplace as the rain beats upon the roof—if she will allow her body and mind to enjoy these kinds of things, they can help to awaken her dormant sensuality, can help her to move back from her dusty sensationless condition toward a reappreciation of the glory of the senses. ”

“ The chapter on love is infinite, and its relations to the sexual appetite make it still more complex. We shall confine ourselves to indicating two more of its irradiations, peculiar to each sex, but having for each a physionomy corresponding to its own mentality. ”

“ Are we face to face with something primitive, or something conventional and derivative? Is it as natural to kiss when we are transported with love as it is to smile when we are mirthful, or weep when we are sad? ”

“ The answer was a kiss that sent a thrill of pleasure through every vein.
"Oh, my dear, this is nothing to what you would enjoy were you to link your fortune to mine and fly with me to France. Then we would live a life of love and pleasure such as you have just tasted. Our whole lives would be nothing but love and pleasure, morn, noon and night it would be love, all love. There should be nothing around us but love - nothing but pleasure!" ”

“ What exhilarating and fragrant aroma diffuses itself through all the chambers of their souls! And this new love which is felt as something unspeakably delightful, at the same time quickens and exalts all their other loves, and imparts to them a fresh delight. They are more kind and tender and affectionate toward everybody. ”

“ Nor was it till after a few enjoyments had numbed and blunted the sense of the smart, and given me to feel the titillating inspersion of balsamic sweets, drew from me the delicious return, and brought down all my passion, that I arrived at excess of pleasure through excess of pain. But, when successive engagements had broke and inured me, I began to enter into the true unalloyed relish of that pleasure of pleasures, when the warm gush darts through all the ravished inwards; what floods of bliss! what melting transports! what agonies of delight! too fierce, too mighty for nature to sustain?... ”

“ How oft the night, with silence and perfume,
Has hushed the world that heart might speak to heart,
And make in each dim haunt of leafy gloom
A trysting-place where love might meet and part,
And kisses fall unseen on lips and brow,
As on thine, sweet! my kisses linger now! ”

“ Those scents and spices are for perfumed balls to be worn round the ladies' necks, there to move up and down to the music of sighs and heart-beating, envied by lovers whose letters will perhaps be perfumed by their contact. ”

“ No sentiment of sublimity raised him above the grosser atmosphere in which love is tainted with lust, luxurious images are sought for their own sake,-8- and passion dwindles in the languor of voluptuousness. ”

“ The delicacy of her love scenes, the lightness of touch that distinguishes her numerous flirtations can only be equalled by the pathos she has thrown into her work every now and then, as if to temper her brightness with a little shade. ”

“ The sensualist has by self-indulgence, blunted the edge of feeling, and it is impossible for him to experience this delicate sensation of exquisite delight,—this marvellous assurance that here and now, face to face, stands the One for whom all time shall be merged into a Song of Love, and upon whom all the sweetest thoughts of imagination shall be brought to bear for the furtherance of mutual joy! ”

“ Fast and furious grew our movements, until at last, with a mutual cry of delight, we sank in each other's arms in the blissful extasy of the most complete enjoyment. It was several minutes before we regained our senses, and both our organs of generation were pulsating, the one within the other, in all the luxury of satiated passion. With her beauteous legs still thrown over mine, she moved her arms to my neck, kissed me voluptuously, and mingled the sweetest accents of gratification with the most endearing caresses and flatteries. ”

“ She wondered if it were usual, this harmony of wish and desire, of thought and expression, of outlook and view between two people, if it were usual for women to feel that adoration for the lover or husband they chose that she felt for Everest, so that his mere entering the room gave her joy, his smile upon her a passionate delight, the sound of his voice an excited pleasure, while his desire for herself carried her away to a paradise of which afterwards her brain could hardly realise or reconstruct in memory the ecstasy. ”

“ And there is all art, and all natural beauty from the beginning—everything that lasts and is life. Why, even to think on such subjects warms my whole being with a glow of enthusiasm which is in itself a more exquisite pleasure than passion, and not alloyed like the latter with uncertainty, that terrible ache. I might take my walk in the garden with my own particular Faust like any other girl, and as I take my glass of champagne at dinner, for its pleasurably stimulating quality, but I hope I should do both in moderation. ”

“ I prefer to go slow, savoring pleasures secure. Is it not bliss to exchange tender kisses containing no dangers, Sucking into our lungs, carefree, our partner's own life? That is the way our long nights of enjoyment are passed. We listen, Breast against breast, to the storm, pouring down rain in the wind Morning begins to dawn, we expect from these hours approaching Blossoms that will adorn festive the coming new day. Quirites, permit me the joy, and may this, of all pleasures on earth the First and the last, be vouchsafed all of mankind by the god. ”

“ And, when it deprives itself of the pleasure of all the sweetness of perfumes which can give it pleasure through the sense of smell, it remains equally unoccupied and in darkness according to this faculty. And, if it also denies itself the pleasure of all food that can satisfy the palate, the soul likewise remains unoccupied and in darkness. ”

“ All the fire with which the ladies endow their substantial amours, when the night has no other lights than their eyes, she transferred into the mystic motions of her head, the exultations of her soul, and the ecstasies of her heart. ”

“ In this way a wedge was driven in between a man's tender and sensual feelings, one still firmly fixed in his erotic life to-day. [8] As a result of this exogamy the sensual needs of men had to be satisfied with strange and unloved women. ”

“ For with the quickened senses of a lover he felt the diffused and perfumed aura of HER presence, of HER garments, of HER flesh, flow in upon him through the open window, and possess his whole breathless being! ”

“ As we were giving then a few moments of pause to the delectation of the senses, in dwelling with the highest relish on this intimatest point of re-union, and chewing the cud of enjoyment, the impatience natural to the pleasure soon drove us into action. Then began the driving tumult on his side, and the responsive heaves on mine, which kept me up to him: whilst as our joys grew too mighty for utterance, the organs of our voice, voluptuously intermixing, became organs of the touch: And, oh, that touch, how delicious! ”