The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, read more

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. Love comes into it too, of course, but in Europe we tend to see marital love as an eternity which encompasses hate and also indifference: when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honor a contract. Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much.

An isolated outbreak of virginity is a rash on the face of society. It arouses only pity from the married, read more

An isolated outbreak of virginity is a rash on the face of society. It arouses only pity from the married, and embarrassment from the single.

How many young hearts have revealed the fact that what they had been trained to imagine the highest earthly felicity read more

How many young hearts have revealed the fact that what they had been trained to imagine the highest earthly felicity was but the beginning of care, disappointment, and sorrow, and often led to the extremity of mental and physical suffering.

I don't think I can play any other way but all out. I enjoy the game so much because I'm read more

I don't think I can play any other way but all out. I enjoy the game so much because I'm putting so much into it.

To understand is to perceive patterns.

To understand is to perceive patterns.

Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.

Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.

To make pleasures pleasant shorten them.

To make pleasures pleasant shorten them.

It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now read more

It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now I mean affection. Now I mean to be fond of (as one is fond of oneself) --to hope, to be disappointed, to live inside the other heart. When I look back on the pain of sex, the love like a wild fox so ready to bite, the antagonism that sits like a twin beside love, and contrast it with affection, so deeply unrepeatable, of two people who have lived a life together (and of whom one must die) it's the affection I find richer. It's that I would have again. Not all those doubtful rainbow colors.

Busy bees chased
the bloom chaste
Though
they crawled on her
clothes
her petals unfolded
and those held close
read more

Busy bees chased
the bloom chaste
Though
they crawled on her
clothes
her petals unfolded
and those held close
still ever faithful
to the sun
is the everpure rose
Whether her hue
is violet or rose
Whether she grows
in freedom or rows
ever to God
in waves arose
the love perfume
from the heart of the rose.