"Sensuality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... calls sons. The flood came not because the generation of Cain was corrupt, but because the generation of the righteous who had believed God, had obeyed his Word, and had possessed the true worship, now had lapsed into idolatry, disobedience to parents, sensuality, oppression. Even so the last day shall be hastened, not by the profligacy of Gentile, Turk and Jew, but by the filling of the Church with errors through the pope and fanatical spirits, so that those very ones who occupy the highest place in the Church exercise themselves in sensuality, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... each are attained are so contrary to each other, that they seem, in my opinion, incompatible, and as impossible to exist together, as to unite in the mind at the same time the most sublime ideas and the lowest sensuality. ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... Pythagoreans. The cold breath of a harshly abstract, a too incorporeal philosophy, had blown, like an east wind, on that last depressing day in the prison-cell of Socrates; and the venerable commonplaces then put forth, in which an overstrained pagan sensuality seems to be reacting, to be taking vengeance, on itself, turned now sick and suicidal, will lose none of their weight with Plato:—That "all who rightly touch philosophy, study nothing else than to die, and to be dead,"—that ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... imagination and the senses. The brush of the same painter depicted Bacchus wedding Ariadne and Mary fainting on the hill of Calvary. Careless of any peril to dogmatic orthodoxy, and undeterred by the dread of encouraging pagan sensuality, the artists wrought out their modern ideal of beauty in the double field of Christian and Hellenic legend. Before the force of painting was exhausted, it had thus traversed the whole cycle of thoughts and feelings that form the content of the modern mind. Throughout this ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... conduct, intelligible and straightforward thinking for an unfettered dreamland, compounded of fairy beauty, flashes of mystical and intuitive understanding intermixed with claptrap magic, a high-flown commercialism and an etherealized sensuality. ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... enumerations in the greatest detail of gifts made to the gods, together with fulsome praises of the kings, written either by themselves or by others, which we are half inclined to regret the lapse of ages has spared from destruction. At the same time morals fall off. Sensuality displays itself in high places. Intrigue enters the charmed circle of the palace. The monarch himself is satirized in indecent drawings. Presently, the whole idea of a divinity hedging in the king departs; and a "thieves' society" is formed for rifling the royal ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... increased my affection for her who had inflicted it. It needed all my affection and all my natural gentleness to prevent me from seeking a renewal of the same treatment by deserving it, for I had found in the pain and even in the shame of it an element of sensuality which left more desire than fear of receiving the experience again from the same hand. It is true that, as in all this a precocious sexual element was doubtless mixed, the same chastisement if inflicted by her ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in the Greek, phronema sarkos, which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh, is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized, yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... fearful risk. Alas! how many have repented through a long life of wretchedness. Can a true woman love a man who lacks principle—who will sacrifice honour for a few paltry dollars—who will debase himself for gain—whose gross sensuality suffocates all high, spiritual love? No! no! It is impossible! And she who unites herself with such a man, must either shrink, grovelling, down to his mean level, or ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... untimely frosts, destroy in a moment what with long and painful effort has been provided. Pestilence still stalks through the earth to slay and make desolate. Each day a hundred thousand human beings die; and how many of these perish as the victims of sins of ignorance, of selfishness, of sensuality. ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... the seeming! I will write against it, You seem to me as Dian in her orb; As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown; But you are more intemperate in your blood Than Venus, or those pamper'd animals That rage in savage sensuality. ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... however, and not of truth, is the moving principle of his mind; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates equally in scenes of Eastern magnificence; or the still solitude of a hermit's cell—in the extremes of sensuality or refinement. ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... been molded to such myriad varieties. It has in full consciousness of its power sacrificed all earthly happiness, toiled and died for rulers, for ideas of which it had no idea, for vague war-cries—it has existed only for sensuality, or beauty, or food—for religion or for ostentation, according to different climate or age or soil—it has groveled for ages in misery or roamed free and proud—and between the degraded slave and the proud free-man there is, as I think, a very terrible difference indeed. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... devotion—a sentiment which they pretend to have received from Mahomet himself by tradition. The fact is, the prophet was very fond of women. The Catholics would seem to think a priest better with absolutely no wife. This is a mere struggle between sensuality and asceticism. There is no love or affection in it. I showed Mohammed an empty bottle. He took a piece of paper and wrote: "The bottle is empty of wine, God fill it again." Such is ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... happiness, delectation, delight; amusement, recreation, diversion; will, choice, preference, desire; voluptuousness, sensuality. Antonym: displeasure. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... failing in other characters. The Greeks may have retrograded from a want of coherence between the many small states, from the small size of their whole country, from the practice of slavery, or from extreme sensuality; for they did not succumb until "they were enervated and corrupt to the very core." (27. Mr. Greg, 'Fraser's Magazine,' Sept. 1868, p. 357.) The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... was the elaborate work of one man—one dull, heartless bigot, living, far away, a life of laborious ease and solemn sensuality; and, in reality, almost as much removed from these fellow-creatures of his, whom he called his subjects, as if he had been the inhabitant of another planet. Has history many more instructive warnings against ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... theatre as if it were plague-stricken. Such a show of religion as this the hope of gain and the fear of loss will produce, at a week's notice, in any abundance which a government may require. But under this show, sensuality, ambition, avarice, and hatred retain unimpaired power, and the seeming convert has only added to the vices of a man of the world all the still darker vices which are engendered by the constant practice of dissimulation. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... greatly celebrated still among his countrymen, I do not say much. His Books, like himself, are what I call unhealthy; not the good sort of Books. There is a sensuality in Rousseau. Combined with such an intellectual gift as his, it makes pictures of a certain gorgeous attractiveness: but they are not genuinely poetical. Not white sunlight: something operatic; a kind of rosepink, artificial ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... old age has its bloom, and the happiest enjoyment of this, also, was vouchsafed him. Only a few months have passed since for him the brethren of our lodge crowned their mysterious sphinx with roses, to show that, if the aged Anacreon undertook to adorn his exalted sensuality with the rose's light twigs, the ethical sensuousness, the tempered joy of life and wit which animated our noble friend also merited a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... she began to think for herself, the dawning of a great light has flooded the world. We are the mothers of men. Show me the mothers of a country and I will tell you of the sons. If men would ever rise above their sensuality and materialism, they must have mothers whose pure souls, brave hearts and clear intellects have touched them deeply before their birth and equipped them ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... vertue, than to any other supply, voluptuousnes being more strong, sinnowie, sturdie, and manly, is but more seriously voluptuous. And we should give it the name of pleasure, more favorable, sweeter, and more naturall; and not terme it vigor, from which it hath his denomination. Should this baser sensuality deserve this faire name, it should be by competencie, and not by privilege. I finde it lesse void of incommodities and crosses than vertue. And besides that> her taste is more fleeting, momentarie, and fading, she hath her fasts, her ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... risen on the European world. Peter the Great, half hero, half savage, had roused the inert barbarism of Russia into a titanic life. His daughter Elizabeth had succeeded to his throne,—heiress of his sensuality, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... been said and written about the sensuality of Mohammed's Religion; more than was just. The indulgences, criminal to us, which he permitted, were not of his appointment; he found them practised, unquestioned from immemorial time in Arabia; what he did was to curtail them, restrict them, not on one but on many sides. ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... a sort of asexual love of perfect men and women, asceticism which permits sex only as a sort of necessary evil and sensuality which proclaims the pleasure of sex as the only joy and scoffs at inhibition influence the lives of us all. The effect of the forbidden, the tantalizing curiosity aroused and the longing to rise above the level of lust make the sex adjustment the most difficult ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... or intrinsically a she-fiend like Valerie or Lisbeth. She does not do harm for harm's sake, nor even directly to gratify spite, greed, or other purely unsocial and detestable passions. She is a type of feminine sensuality of the less ambitious and restless sort. Given a decent education, a fair fortune, a good-looking and vigorous husband to whom she had taken a fancy, and no special temptation, and she might have been a blameless, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... doubt not they are all spent wisely and profitably; but what are their hours of recreation? Those hours that with us are passed in the enjoyment of all that art can win from nature; when, if the elaborate repast be more deeply relished than sages might approve, it is redeemed from sensuality by the presence of elegance and beauty. What is the American pendant to this? I will not draw any comparisons between a good dinner party in the two countries; I have heard American gentlemen say, that they could perceive no difference between them; ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... relation between sensuality and religion, so often commented upon and denied, again proven, and always misinterpreted, thus receives a satisfactory explanation. Some singular manifestations of it, of significance in religious history, are presented by the records of insane delusions. They confirm ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... years of Mithridates.] His whole history is in fact one long record of sensuality, treachery, and murder. From his earliest years he had breathed, as it were, an atmosphere of assassination. His father had been assassinated when he was eleven years old. His guardians and even his own mother had then plotted to assassinate him. They ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... and harvests. And what is there in the world to distinguish virtues from dishonors, or the valor of Caesar from the softness of the Egyptian eunuchs, or that can make anything rewardable but the labor and the danger, the pain and the difficulty? Virtue could not be anything but sensuality if it were the entertainment of our senses and fond desires; and Apicius had been the noblest of all the Romans, if feeding and great appetite and despising the severities of temperance had been the work and proper employment ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... Greeks may have succeeded in the Beautiful, and even in the Moral, we cannot concede any higher character to their civilisation than that of a refined and ennobled sensuality. Of course this must be understood generally. The conjectures of a few philosophers, and the irradiations of poetical inspiration, constitute an occasional exception. Man can never altogether turn aside his thoughts from ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... likely outran the feeling, but they served at least to keep it alive, while the false platonism and ultra-refined sentiment were simply moral protests against the coarse vices of the time. The prudery which reached a satirical climax in "Les Precieuses Ridicules" was a natural reaction from the sensuality of a Marguerite and a Gabrielle. Mme. de Rambouillet saw and enjoyed the first performance of this celebrated play, nor does it appear that she was at all disturbed by the keen satire which was generally supposed to have been directed toward her salon. Moliere himself ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... expressing, he is here at his very best. There was nothing spiritual in love as Gounod knew it—it was purely animal, though delicately animal; and Marguerite remains, and will remain, as the final expression of the most refined and voluptuous form of sensuality. What he had done in "Faust" he attempted to do again, with sundry differences, in "Romeo and Juliet"; and here the method which had served him so faithfully and so well in "Faust" utterly broke down. In "Faust" there were virtually ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... without both losing their original identity. You may place the bit of contentment in the mouth of ambition, so to speak, and jog along in your sterile course between the vast wheat fields groaning under the thousand-toothed plough and the gardens of delight swooning with devotion and sensuality. But cross ambition with contentment and you get the hinny of indifference or the monster of fatalism. We do not say that indifference at certain passes of life, and certain stages, is not healthy, and fatalism not powerful; but both we believe are factors ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the consideration of our end." And it is manifest that he no longer felt more pleasure than sorrow in eating, drinking, repose, and in generating, but in not feeling hunger, nor thirst, nor fatigue, nor sensuality. From this may be understood what is according to us the perfection of firmness; not in this, that the tree neither bends nor breaks, nor is rent, but in that it does not so much as stir, and its prototype keeps spirit, sense, and intellect, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... this, Paganel maintained, not without a show of reason, that sensuality, and especially hunger, was the first cause of cannibalism among the New Zealanders, and not only among the Polynesian races, but also among the savages ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... were to be spent upon learning, and not learning to be applied to means. And as for the privateness or obscureness (as it may be in vulgar estimation accounted) of life of contemplative men, it is a theme so common to extol a private life, not taxed with sensuality and sloth, in comparison and to the disadvantage of a civil life, for safety, liberty, pleasure, and dignity, or at least freedom from indignity, as no man handleth it but handleth it well; such a consonancy it hath to men's conceits in the expressing, and to men's ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... was that court where Daniel was? Half shambles and half pigsty. Luxury, sensuality, lust, self-seeking, idolatry, ruthless cruelty, and the like were the environment of this man. And in the middle of these there grew up that fair flower of a character, pure and stainless, by the acknowledgment of enemies, and in which not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... come, will combine the most exquisite culture of heart and mind with true simplicity and naturalness of living. Excessive meat eating, strong spices and condiments, alcohol, coffee, tea, overwork, night work, fear, worry, sensuality, corsets, high heels, foul air, improper breathing, lack of exercise, loveless marriages, race suicide, all of these and many other evils of hypercivlization have contributed their share in creating the universal degeneracy ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... innumerable minstrelsies of nature, as well as from the higher art of man, that soothe, elevate, and solemnise. It is true, indeed, that there are grosser appetites of the body which many pervert so as to enslave the spirit; thus abusing by gluttony, drunkenness, and every form of sensuality, what God the merciful and wise has intrusted to man to be used for wise and merciful ends. But even here there is already perceptible a marked difference between those appetites and the more refined tastes alluded ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... fed them with direct and conscious falsehoods. "Voltaire," he informs them, "declares there is no God;" he was "an antitheist, that is one who deliberately and avowedly opposed and hated God; who swore in his blasphemy that he would dethrone him;" and "advocated the very depths of the lowest sensuality." With regard to many statements of a similar kind, equally at variance with truth, in Dr. Cumming's volumes, we presume that he has been misled by hearsay or by the second-hand character of his acquaintance with free-thinking literature. An evangelical preacher is not obliged to ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... any relation at all of cause and effect exists there. This latter doubt is justified by the fact that one of the most regular symptoms among savage as well as among civilized peoples is the most sudden and excessive sensuality, which then with equal suddenness transforms into penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renunciation, both symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised epilepsy? But nowhere is it MORE obligatory to put aside explanations around no other type has there grown ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of which a number are extant, are pictures of a strong-built, bull-necked, fat, gross man, with a snub nose, a vulgar face, a look of sensuality and ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... delivered from it. Oh, papa, looking back upon that home of horror, that den of infamy, I understand in what hell consists—not in consuming fire, but in the company of devils! Oh, sir, if you could once place yourself in my position and feel what it was for me to leave that polluted atmosphere of sensuality, treachery, and hatred, and to come into this pure air of refinement, truth, and love, you would understand how it is that I can feel ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... head, for all the world like a percussion copper cap. Well, I crooks her little fingers, and crumps them well up together, As humanity pints out, and burnt her nostrums with a feather; But for all as I can do, to restore her to her mortality, She never gives a sign of a return to sensuality. Thinks I, well there she lies, as dead as my own late departed mother, Well, she'll wash no more in this world, whatever she does in t'other. So I gives myself to scramble up the linens for a minute, Lawk, sich ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... the most complete, the most ideal personification of SENSUALITY—not of vulgar, ignorant, non intelligent, mistaken sensuousness which is always deceit ful and corrupted by habit or by the necessity for gross and ill-regulated enjoyments, but that exquisite sensuality which ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Sensuality was not encouraged in Canada by the leaders of society, as was notoriously the case in the best circles of England and of France. Dull and devoid of intellectual light as was the life of the Canadian, he had his ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... age is to be followed by a dreamy spiritualism, raising men above the observance of vulgar duties, but not above the practice of the grossest vices. It is not uncharitable to mark such tendencies, where we see canonized Rousseau, the very embodiment of sensuality, egotism, and misanthropy; and progress so taught to be the law of individual man, that, whether going to commit his crimes at the brothel, or to expiate them on the gallows, his tendencies are still and ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... repulsive, forbidding, demoniac! You speak of woman as being the noblest subject of contemplation for man, but interpreted by your book and your experiences this seems in the last analysis to lead you right into sensuality, and what I should call illicit connections. Look at your story of Doris! I do want to know what you feel about that story in relation to right and wrong. Do you consider that all that Orelay adventure was put right, atoned, explained by the fact that Doris, by her mind ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Then he was charged with having poignarded his mistress. This he also publicly refuted. The fact is that he knew better how to make money than friends, and he raised up enemies wherever his thirst for gold led him. Avarice was his master-passion; and, second to this, gross sensuality. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... taste is obtained from a somewhat similar collection of stories, "Der Geist der Romane im letzten Viertel des 18ten Jahrhunderts," Breslau and Hirschberg, 1788, in which the author (S.G. Preisser?) claims to follow the spirit of the period and gives six stories of revolting sensuality, with a thin whitewash of ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... cried, delighted. "Better Seneca for you than sensuality; Virgilius than venery. When you are as ripe as I, you may trifle awhile if you like with lightness." Here I, listening, sniggered, for it was blown about the city that Messer Brunetto had his passions or fancies or vagaries, call ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... whereas, they found these islanders a nation of half-naked savages, living in the surf and on the sand, eating raw fish, fighting among themselves, tyrannized over by feudal chiefs and abandoned to sensuality, they now see them decently clothed, recognizing the law of marriage, knowing something of accounts, going to school and public worship more regularly than the people do at home, and the more elevated of them taking part ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... limbs, his feet, for he rode without stirrups or saddle, reaching almost to the ground; his complexion was almost as dark as that of a Mulatto; his features very handsome, the eyes particularly so, but filled with an expression which was bold and bad; and there was a disgusting look of sensuality about the mouth. He addressed a few words to the Mahasni, with whom he seemed to be well acquainted, inquiring who I was. The old man answered, "O Jew, my sultan understands our speech, thou hadst better address thyself to him." The lad then spoke to me in Arabic, but almost instantly dropping that ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... title of a curious piece in the last number of Frazer's Magazine. It is unique as a sample of kingcraft; and every line supplies a proof of the candor, hypocrisy, unscrupulousness, sense of duty, courage, sensuality, and intellect, of the great Prussian, to whom are partially due the literary merits ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... resemblances, probably helped by an equivoque in the language, are closely affiliated in the Hindoo myth {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} a reddish colour of the skin, want of symmetry and ungainliness of form, strength in hugging with the fore paws or arms, the faculty of climbing, shortness of tail(?), sensuality, capacity of instruction in dancing and in music, are all characteristics which more or less distinguish and meet in bears as well as in monkeys. In the Ramayanam, the wise Jamnavant, the Odysseus ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... sky overhead was hard and brazen. On the lawn stood a graceful mountain ash, and beneath it were two figures. The first was that of a man, and evidently the master of the place. His appearance and manner chiefly indicated pride, haughtiness, and also sensuality. He had broken a spray from the ash-tree, and with a condescending air was in the act of handing it to a lady, in the portraiture of whom Dennis had truly displayed great skill. She was very beautiful, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... In the sensuality of Nero there may still be found some trace of a higher nature; "What an artist the world has lost!" he ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... to, what has been done? How do I come into the midst of it all?" The vastness of street and house he was prepared for, the multitudes of people. But conflicts in the city ways! And the systematised sensuality of a ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... back to the matter in hand, however. Believe me, without further instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation's vice, or virtue, was written in its art: the soldiership of early Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of Tuscany; the splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. I have no time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now);[206] but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in a ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... there is a great work to do, which wants every laborer,—to show that Art's highest vocation is, to be the handmaid to religion and purity, instead of to mere animal enjoyment and sensuality. This is what the Pre-Raphaelites are really doing in various degrees, but especially Hunt, who takes higher ground than mere morality, and most manfully advocates its power and duty as an exponent of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... out[675] fine names to cover our sensuality withal, but no gifts can raise intemperance. The man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of the senses trivial and to count them nothing considered with his devotion to his art. His art rebukes him. That never taught him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to reap ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... vinous trait we found, however, in the person of a beggar. He was sitting on Grandstone's steps as we emerged. Aged hardly fourteen, he had turned his young nose toward the rich fumes coming up from the kitchen with a look of sensuality and indulgence that amused me. The maid, on a hint of mine, gave him a biscuit and the remainders of our bottles emptied into a bowl. A smile of extreme breadth and intelligence spread over his face. Opening his bag, he laid by the biscuit, and extracted a morsel of iced cake: at the same time ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... or slushy, green things born of unconscious jealousy, or unpleasant things born of false pieties, or hard views born of tired experience, or worldly products of incredulity, or directly evil suggestions, or the repulsions of satiated sensuality, or the bitter fruits of melancholia, or the foreshadowings of insanity, or the mere dislike of the lower moralities for the higher, or the uneasiness felt by the ordinary in the presence of the rare, or the revolt felt by the conventional ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... Luke thrice made with his own hand the portrait of Our Lady?... That holy evangelist ought certainly to have known the will of his Lord and Master better than you, my opponent, who wish to interpret the Scripture according to your sensuality." Discours des Guerres de Provence (Arch. curieuses, iv. 501, 502). Of course, the author never dreamed that his ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... fine and sensitive instincts of a gentleman were in him, and though in the very depths of his own conscience he knew himself to be as much of a social actor as Miraudin was a professional one,—though he was aware that his passions were as sensual, and therefore as vulgar, (for sensuality is vulgarity), there was a latent pride in him which forbade him to set himself altogether on the same level. And now as he walked away haughtily, his fine aristocratic head lifted a little higher in air than usual, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of men, who disguise themselves like masquers to deceive the world. For, whilst they give the common people to understand that they are busied about nothing but contemplation and devotion in fastings and maceration of their sensuality—and that only to sustain and aliment the small frailty of their humanity—it is so far otherwise that, on the contrary, God knows what cheer they make; Et Curios simulant, sed Bacchanalia vivunt. You may read it in great letters in the colouring of their red snouts, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... has another curious aspect. It is a very tolerable thermometer by which to measure the downward progress of nations. Pagan Rome, in times of comparative purity, had her laws against idolatry; but as her higher classes advanced in refinement and sensuality, and the plebeians became debased and brutalized, the whole religious ideas of the nation degenerated into idolatry, associated with a despotic miracle-working priesthood, and soon followed by a political despotism. It is curious to witness how exactly it takes ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... among the higher classes, either altogether overlook or deny, or at least greatly extenuate the corruption and weakness here in question. They acknowledge indeed that there is, and ever has been in the world, a great portion of vice and wickedness; that mankind have been ever prone to sensuality and selfishness, in disobedience to the more refined and liberal principles of their nature; that in all ages and countries, in public and in private life, innumerable instances have been afforded of oppression, of rapacity, of cruelty, of fraud, of envy, and of malice. They ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... whole code of love. We have to treat with contempt the woman who abjectly accepts the act, and her own passivity therein, as the whole duty of love. We have to understand that the art of love has nothing to do with vice, and the acquirement of erotic personality nothing to do with sensuality. But we have also to realise that the art of love is far from being the attainment of a refined and luxurious self-indulgence, and the acquirement of erotic personality of little worth unless it fortifies and enlarges the whole personality in ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... happy privilege is forfeited for ever, when the pointed significancy of the confessor's questions, and the direct knowledge which he plants in the mind, have awakened a guilty familiarity with every form of impurity and unhallowed sensuality. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... such as hers had been was the prostitution of love, and now she deserved to be loveless for the rest of her life. Vanity and sensuality had been her substitutes for love. She had dealt in travesty and had pretended, even to herself, that she was following reality. It was amazing how she had managed to ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... stronger than himself. The companionship of Hayward was the worst possible thing for Philip. He was a man who saw nothing for himself, but only through a literary atmosphere, and he was dangerous because he had deceived himself into sincerity. He honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion, his vacillation for the artistic temperament, and his idleness for philosophic calm. His mind, vulgar in its effort at refinement, saw everything a little larger than life size, with the outlines blurred, in a golden ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... turn, read Celsus. That oracle of the ancients makes an admirable panegyric on water; in short, he says in plain terms that those who plead an inconstant stomach in favor of wine, publish a libel on their own viscera, and make their constitution a pretense for their sensuality." ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... stars, moving in their courses, the recurring seasons, furnish proofs of their existence; and there is the general opinion of mankind.' I fear that the unbelievers—not that I care for their opinion—will despise us. You are not aware that their impiety proceeds, not from sensuality, but from ignorance taking the garb of wisdom. 'What do you mean?' At Athens there are tales current both in prose and verse of a kind which are not tolerated in a well-regulated state like yours. The oldest of them relate the origin ...
— Laws • Plato
... gravity, and acting as umpires in all cases of doubt between the parties. They, in fact, led a glorious life during the three months they remained at the village; that period was to them a continued carnival. The best fare the country afforded—the best attire that money could procure—all that sensuality, all that vanity could desire—their means permitted them to enjoy. Their lands not having been hunted on during the war, the beaver multiplied at an extraordinary rate, and now swarmed in every direction. Every individual belonging to the tribe might then have acquired an ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... Digestions, explains in what manner the volatile effluvia from the intestines stimulate and promote the operations of the animal economy: he affirmed, the last Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the Medicis family, who refined upon sensuality with the spirit of a philosopher, was so delighted with that odour, that he caused the essence of ordure to be extracted, and used it as the most delicious perfume: that he himself (the doctor) when he happened to be low-spirited, or fatigued ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... ask of Me? Give Me, if thou wilt, a list of all thy desires, all the wants of thy soul. Tell Me, simply, of all thy pride, sensuality, self-love, sloth; and ask for My help in ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... as the perverse delirium of an unbridled sensuality. It was certainly the gross act of a madman, but there was perhaps more politics in his madness than perversity; for it was an attempt to introduce into Rome the dynastic marriages between brothers and sisters which had been the constant tradition of the Ptolemies and the Pharaohs of Egypt. ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... also understood nothing of this world of mysterious tombs, with its moral teachings thousands of years old, or of the great spiritual revelation with which the land of the Pharaohs is impregnated. Both alike—Jeremiah, unmoved by the cruelty and hardness of Jehovah, Herodotus, oblivious to the sensuality and immorality of his own gods, who, according to Xenophon, were adepts at thieving and lying—shook their heads in dismay before the Egyptian symbols. But Plato, on the contrary, was able to appreciate the harmonious ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... who made sensuality beautiful, ugliness seductive, and the sin-stained soul attractive, renounced all and followed the Monk of San Marco—sensuality and asceticism at the last are one. When the procession headed for the Piazza Signoria, where the fagots were piled high, Sandro stood afar ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Mr. Moore is infinitely more insidious and malignant. It seems to be his aim to impose corruption upon his readers, by concealing it under the mask of refinement; to reconcile them imperceptibly to the most vile and vulgar sensuality, by blending its language with that of exalted feeling and tender emotion; and to steal impurity into their hearts, by gently perverting the most simple and generous of their affections. In the execution of this unworthy task, he labours with ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... never to be recalled without a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... absorbed on some object which will divert his thoughts intellectually or ideally; and by slight yet constant pressure, exercised not by fits and starts, but day after day, directly and indirectly, his father must form an antipathy in him to brutish, selfish sensuality. Above all, there must be no toying with passion, and no books permitted, without condemnation and warning, which are not of a heroic turn. When the boy becomes a man he may read Byron without danger. To a youth ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... his cream without enthusiasm, pausing at times and turning his head away. In fact, he persisted only out of an incorrigible sensuality, and finally withdrew a pace or two, leaving creamy traces still upon the saucer. With a multitude of fond words his kind mistress drew his attention to these, whereupon, making a visible effort, he ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... greatness are but pleasing dreams, And shadows soon decaying. On the stage Of my mortality, my youth has acted Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length By varied pleasures—sweetened in the mixture, But tragical in issue. Beauty, pomp, With every sensuality our giddiness Doth frame an idol—are inconstant friends When any troubled passion makes us halt On the unguarded castle ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a moral man, certainly so far as to exercise self-restraint and live in an ordered way. Unless this is so, he will be unable to give his principal energies to thought and work—that is, he will not be a good typical engineer. If sensuality appear at all largely in this central body, therefore,—a point we must leave open here—it will appear without any trappings of sentiment or mysticism, frankly on Pauline lines, wine for the stomach's sake, and it is better to marry than to burn, a concession ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Yin-Yang School, the Mo-Di School, Medicine, War, Law, Miscellaneous, so that nine directions in all are represented. Quiescence is the Taoism for non-activity, while Action is the Taoism for care of the body, as inaugurated by We Be Yang. The Devil-King of Chaos, i.e., sensuality, whose seat is supposed to be in Kidneys. "Red garments," colors, here all have an allegorical meaning. Death, i.e., Yama. The Evening Star is the star of metal; Sun Wu Kung also personifies a metal, hence the Evening Star appears as his apologist. As regards Li Dsing and Notscha see ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... with an immodesty which appeared to him sublime, he ended by falling on his knees before her as the early Christians did before those pure and holy martyrs whom the persecution of the emperors gave up in the circus to the sanguinary sensuality of the populace. The brand disappeared; the ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... city, he is esteemed brave; but a singular reversion takes place if the rencontre be between poor men. It is then a diabolical act, a murder, which nothing short of the gallows can serve for punishment. The creatures whom he had made mere objects to serve his sensuality were before him; he traced the gloomy history of their unfortunate sires; he knew that Ellen and Clotilda were born free. The cordon that had bound his feelings to the system of slavery relaxed. For the first time, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... a person with a narrow forehead, small grey eyes, and that peculiar expression of countenance which the vice of indulged avarice seems generally to produce. Though his lips denoted sensuality, their total want of firmness showed the astute Father Mendez that he would be easily moulded to his will. The marquis was perfectly well aware of the way in which the church was at times apt to bleed those whom she designated her most devoted ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the control of the forces of nature has been carried to the highest pitch of development may furnish a background to the darkest of passions. It may serve as a stage upon which callous indifference, greed, rapacity, gross sensuality, play their parts naked and unashamed. That some men sunk in ignorance and subject to such passions live in huts and have their noses pierced, and others have taken up from their environment the habit of ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... silent and unpeopled now! How often has the train of captives looked, with sinking hearts, upon the distant city, and beheld its population pouring out, to hail the return of their conqueror! What riot, sensuality and murder, have run mad in the vast palaces now heaps of brick and shattered marble! What glare of fires, and roar of popular tumult, and wail of pestilence and famine, have come sweeping over the wild plain where nothing is now heard but the wind, and where the solitary ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... it are more prominent, and savage elements are introduced. It was more adapted to foster than to check lust and cruelty. To Astarte, maidens sacrifice their chastity. There was the same double ritual, made up of gross sensuality on the one hand, and of ascetic practices by the priesthood on the other, that belonged to the service of Mylitta at Babylon. Human sacrifice by fire was another horrible feature. Children, especially, were offered to El ("god"; ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Likewise it was ordained, that they should seduce man, and that he should fall, and propagate a race of sinful creatures like himself, and that all the shocking consequences should follow; that Cain should murder his brother; that the old world should be immersed in sin and sensuality, and then be drowned; and, though Noah was a preacher of righteousness a hundred and twenty years, that none should believe and be saved; likewise the arriving of the Sodomites to such an enormous pitch of wickedness, was ordained; and ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... coming through the parted portieres from the kitchen. Harry was very fond of roasted chicken. He inhaled that and the delicate perfume of Ida's garments and hair. He regarded her glowing beauty with affection which had no taint of sensuality. Harry had more of a poetic liking for sweet odors and ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... on a luetic basis is accepted there as a tragic element of human fate. On the height of true art the question of decency or indecency has disappeared, too. The nude marble statue is an inspiration, and not a possible stimulus to frivolous sensuality, if the mind is aesthetically cultivated. The nakedness of erotic passion in the drama of high aesthetic intent before a truly educated audience has not the slightest similarity to the half-draped chorus of sensual operetta before a gallery which wants to be tickled. But who would ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... silently like stalled oxen, appointed some one to read aloud in the refectory; and the Fathers, obeying the same civilised instinct, had contrived in their theology intelligible points of attachment for religious emotion. A refined mind finds as little happiness in love without friendship as in sensuality without love; it may succumb to both, but it accepts neither. What is true of mere sensibility is no less true of mere fancy. The Arabian Nights—futile enough in any case—would be absolutely intolerable if they contained no Oriental manners, no human passions, and no convinced epicureanism behind ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... unthrifty and wastifull spending, voluptuousness of life and palpable sensuality brought Pericles, Callias, the sonne of Hipponicus, and Nicias not only to necessitie, but to povertie and beggerie. Who, after their money waxed scant, and turned to a very lowe ebbe, they three drinking a poysoned potion one to another (which was the last cuppe that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... basket-woven flasks from Italy, absolutely littered the board. Drinking-glasses of every size and hue filled up the interstices, and the thirsty German flagon stood side by side with the aerial bubbles of Venetian glass that rest so lightly on their threadlike stems. An odour of luxury and sensuality floated through the apartment. The lamps that burned in every direction seemed to diffuse a subtle incense on the air, and in a large vase that stood on the floor I saw a mass of magnolias, tuberoses, and jasmines grouped together, stifling each other with ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... decree abolished the Saturnalia, and exiled the dancing teachers, but the many acts of the Senate to secure a better standard were useless against the foreign inhabitants of the Empire accustomed to sensuality and licence. ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... hateful to me; I had never done so more than the times related, that is as far as I now can recollect, frightened as said, by my godfather telling me, that it sent men mad, and made them hateful to women. So although boiling with sensuality, I was still all but a virgin, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... about his bree, His tap-lip lang by inches three - A slockened sort 'mon,' to pree A' sensuality - A droutly glint was ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... counsel, Bazmant fell asleep in the arms of sensuality; and when he awoke was obliged to take to flight: notwithstanding the bravery of his soldiers, the enemy had become ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... industry; but the noise of giddy mirth, boisterous and unmeaning laughter, or fierce and angry contention. If there be stillness, it is not the peace and quiet of well-ordered society, but the gloomy and deathlike stillness of indolence, sensuality, and beastly degradation. Now, who does not know that children are likely to be much influenced by the aspect and character of the society by which they are surrounded? Who does not know that they are likely to imbibe the spirit of the nation in which they live, whether on the one ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... estrangement of Radha and Krishna caused by Krishna's love for other cowgirls, Radha's anguish at Krishna's neglect and lastly the rapture which attends their final reunion. Jayadeva describes Radha's longing and Krishna's love-making with glowing sensuality yet the poem reverts continually to praise of ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... all he may be right—who knows! So a year passed away in sadness, with a few bad turnings into sensuality, followed by repenting in verse. It was the anniversary of her death, and Dante was outlining angels to illustrate his sonnets wherein he apotheosized Beatrice. And behold! as he day-dreamed of his Beatrice sweet consolation came in double form. First he saw a gentle lady who looked very much like ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the warmer tones of his replies; a new pain ordered his comments. The situation, too, appealed to him; his instinct responded to the obvious implications of the position in the exact degree of his habit of mind. The familiar, professional gallantry took possession of him, directing the sensuality to which he ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... nothing selfish in it; he was not a friend or protector; but he was her father, an unhappy wretch, going into eternity, depraved and thoughtless. Could a life of sensuality be a preparation for a peaceful death? Thus meditating, she passed the still ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... more to say to you, which I scarcely know how to communicate. Somebody here has loaded your character with very heavy imputations. You are said to be addicted to gaming, sensuality, and the lowest vices. How much grief this intelligence has given to all who love you, you will easily imagine. To find you innocent of these charges would free my heart from the keenest solicitude it has hitherto felt. I leave to you ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... unrelieved by any eminence of genius or virtue, or by the stir of great public interests, presented little more than a dull monotony of sensuality and indolence, on a ground of inhumanity. It is no wonder that Zachary Macaulay, from his experience in Jamaica as the superintendent of an estate, formed in quiet sternness that resolution to devote his life to uprooting a social system whose presiding divinities ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Of Temperance, pursues the subject, and represents the internal conquests of self-mastery, the conquests of a man over his passions, his violence, his covetousness, his ambition, his despair, his sensuality. Sir Guyon, after conquering many foes of goodness, is the destroyer of the most perilous of them all, Acrasia, licentiousness, and her ensnaring Bower of Bliss. But after this, the thread at once of story and allegory, slender henceforth at the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... to Mrs. Winscombe, to himself. His entire attitude toward her, his observations, had been upset, disarmed, by her unexpected air of soft melancholy. In her lavender wrap she resembled a drooping branch of flowering lilac. She seemed very young; her air of sophistication, her sensuality of being, had vanished. Traces of her illness on shipboard still lingered darkly under her eyes. Asleep, he suddenly thought, her face would be very innocent, purified. This came to him involuntarily; there was none of the stinging of the senses ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... knows how to set matters to rights, the affairs of the heart had always appeared to me as the most important. I was never weary of reflecting upon the transient nature of attachments, the mutability of human character, moral sensuality, and all the heights and depths, the combination of which in our nature may be considered as the riddle of human life. Here, too, I sought to get rid of that which troubled me, in a song, an epigram, in some kind of rhyme; which, since they referred to the most ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the negroes, though with many variants, became largely standardized into the predominant plantation type. The traits which prevailed were an eagerness for society, music and merriment, a fondness for display whether of person, dress, vocabulary or emotion, a not flagrant sensuality, a receptiveness toward any religion whose exercises were exhilarating, a proneness to superstition, a courteous acceptance of subordination, an avidity for praise, a readiness for loyalty of a feudal sort, and last but not least, a healthy human repugnance ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... not bow willingly to what is infirm and wrong in human nature. If it yields to us, it must yield to what is divine in us. The wickedness of my neighbor cannot submit to my wickedness; his sensuality, for instance, to my anger against his vices. My faults are not the instruments that are to arrest his faults. And therefore impatient reformers, and denouncing preachers, and hasty reprovers, and angry parents, and irritable relatives ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... wicked world—Magic for Devotion—Sensuality for Worship—breaks in upon our vision, as the scene changes from the Halls of Montsalvat to Klingsor's palace. Klingsor, an impure knight, who has been refused admittance to the order of the "Sangrail," ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... always be an abiding memory in this place. If you will bear it about with you in your hearts, not only will you be kept from lip service, slackness, half-heartedness in your daily duties,—and from the graver faults of youth at which his noble soul would have revolted,—from dishonesty, sensuality and impurity in every form,—but you will be able, each in his sphere, to realise more fully the ideal of goodness and truth, so that at the last you, too, may hear the voices whispering as they have now spoken to him,—'Well ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... years of the reign of Louis XV. The former dominated the king by means of her intelligence, but the latter swayed the sovereign, already consumed by his sensual excesses, through her peculiarly seductive sensuality. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... pulling buttons, or twisting garments, strings, etc., twirling pencils, etc.) are relics of past forms of utilities now essentially obsolete. Ancient modes of locomotion, prehension, balancing, defense, attack, sensuality, etc., are all rehearsed, some quite fully and some only by the faintest mimetic suggestion, flitting spasmodic tensions, gestures, or ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... 7. He was the first who bought a dishonourable peace from the enemies of the state, agreeing to pay a considerable annual tribute to the Goths, whom it was his duty to repress. He was regardless of every national calamity, and was lost in debauchery and sensuality. The Pagans were allowed a power of persecuting the Christians through all parts of the state. 8. These calamities were succeeded by a pestilence from heaven, that seemed to have spread over every part of the earth, and continued raging for several ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... accord. He was the coldest friend and the violentest enemy I ever knew: I felt it too much not to know it. He at first seemed to despise wealth: But he delivered himself up afterwards to luxury and sensuality: And by that means he ran into a vast expence, and stuck at nothing that was necessary to support it. In his long imprisonment he had great impressions of religion on his mind: But he wore these out so entirely, that scarce any trace of them was left. His great ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... I found here some older and some more recent works of poetry, enjoying high esteem and wide circulation, while unhappily their character to me was utterly offensive. I shall only mention Heinse's Ardinghello and Schiller's Robbers. The first I hated for its having undertaken to exhibit sensuality and mystical abstruseness, ennobled and supported by creative art: the last, because in it, the very paradoxes moral and dramatic, from which I was struggling to get liberated, had been laid hold of by a powerful though ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... suspended by cold New England winters and New England religions, moral and social influences; the Ophites of old and the Cairene gypsy showed the boy as warmed to life in lands whose winters are as burning summers. Elsie Venner is not sensual, and sensuality is the leading trait of the human-serpent nature. Herein lies an error, just as a sculptor would err who should present Lady Godiva as fully draped, or Sappho merely as a sweet singer of Lesbos, or Antinous only as a fine young man. He who would harrow hell and rake out the ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... quite so tall as his visitor, he appeared to be taller. His face was long and angular; the round, clear, blue eyes, the finest feature of it, the narrowness of the forehead the worst. The mouth-corners were drawn down, and the lips hardened to a line by constant compression. No trace of sensuality. How came this man, grey with age, to marry a girl whose appeal to the senses was already so obvious? The eyes and prominent temples of the idealist supplied the answer. Deacon Hooper was a New Englander, trained in the ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... which had been preached by Pope Boniface VIII., he was in the mid-path of life, and was lost, as he allegorically describes it at the beginning of the "Inferno," in a wild and savage wood. He was hindered from ascending the sunny hill of heavenly aims by the speckled panther of sensuality, the gaunt, gray wolf of avaricious selfishness, and the fierce lion of wrath and ambitious pride. But he was restored to hope and effort by a vision of Beatrice, which seems to have come to him before his Easter communion, and fixed in his mind the purpose of writing about Beatrice—in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... the brutal lust of man. No doubt man's animal propensities have had much to do with the existence of this form of the family. Nevertheless, while male sensuality is at the basis of polygyny, it would be a mistake to think that sensuality is an adequate explanation in all cases. On the contrary, we find many other causes, chiefly, perhaps, economic, operating also to ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... not prevent the introduction of the flowing poison. Gain-seeking and corrupt men will, for profit and sensuality, defeat my wishes, but nothing will induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... relish. They may be termed a kind of spiritual sensuality, wherein the soul letting itself go too far, by reason of the sweetness it finds in them, falls imperceptibly into decay. The crafty enemy presents such sort of interior elevations and raptures for baits to entrap the soul, to fill it with vanity and ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... seized upon the maiden as for an instant she caught the gaze of mingled malice and sensuality they bent upon her; and seizing Henri's hand, she flew over the ground toward La Tour with the fleetness of a ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... men upon our streets who are solid bestiality and villainy done up in flesh and skin. Each feature is as eloquent of rascality as an ape's of idiocy. Experts skilled in physiognomy need no confession from impish lips, but read the life-history from page to page written on features "dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, branded by remorse; the body consumed with sloth and dishonored with selfish uses; the bones full of the sins of youth, the face hideous with secret vices, the roots dried up beneath and the branches cut off above." It is as natural ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... sense of sublimity in it, neither in mere foolishness, but with a resolute choice, such as I can completely account for on no acknowledged principle of human nature. For in the worst conditions of sensuality there is yet some perception of the beautiful, so that men utterly depraved in principle and habits of thought will yet admire beautiful things and fair faces. But in the temper of which I am now speaking there is no preference ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... expensive couches and tables, to call in the assistance of butchers and cooks, or to fatten like voracious animals in private. For so not only their manners would be corrupted, but their bodies disordered; abandoned to all manner of sensuality and dissoluteness, they would require long sleep, warm baths, and the same indulgence as in perpetual sickness. To effect this was certainly very great; but it was greater still, to secure riches from rapine and from envy, as Theophrastus ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... precisely the impression he made upon me. It was not exactly spirituality that was obvious, though the screen of the flesh seemed almost transparent, because there was in his face an outrageous sensuality; but, though it sounds nonsense, it seemed as though his sensuality were curiously spiritual. There was in him something primitive. He seemed to partake of those obscure forces of nature which the Greeks personified in shapes part human and part beast, the satyr ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... resourceful mind that possibly the best way of securing this girl's attachment to him, would be by a vivid appeal to her senses. His prestige was at stake, and in this dilemma men have been known to go to even greater lengths than when driven by sensuality alone. He did not underestimate the vigour of her passions, and knew that in this direction there was hope ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici |
