Dangerous Delight

"Even the greatest of delights without the least of restrictions will quickly cease to satisfy. A pristine joy, like sex, made common and base is merely a defiled and repulsive thing." Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

"Sex is ruled by a peculiar version of supply and demand--our desire for it can only be spoiled by promiscuity." Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

"The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant. There is something dangerous and disproportionate in its place in human nature, for whatever reason; and it does really need a special purification and dedication. The modern talk about sex being free like any other sense, about the body being beautiful like any tree or flower, is either a description of the Garden of Eden or a piece of thoroughly bad psychology, of which the world grew weary two thousand years ago." G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"Every modern man is ultimately a hypocrite when it comes to sex. He feels the need for some element of purity on the part of his wife or lover--but then spends most of his efforts avoiding it himself." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"The orgasm has replaced the cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment." C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

"Oh shame, where is thy blush?
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
To flaming youth, let virtue be as wax
And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardor gives the charge,
Since for itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will."
William Shakespeare (c.1564-1616)

"There two basic facts about sex: it is very good and it is very dangerous." Margaret Thatcher (1925-)

"Purity is the beginning of all passion. Thus, faithful marriage is the only guarantee of unbridled sexual pleasure." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

"Every indicator of civility in society is undermined by sexual promiscuity--or what modern chroniclers often call “sexual liberation.” As it turns out, the age old traditions of faithfulness, honesty, purity, and integrity became traditions for a very good reason: they ensure that the good and true and beautiful remain good and true and beautiful. Thus, the modern erosion of sexual morality has literally opened a Pandora’s Box of social, cultural, and personal ills. Families have been devastated. Children have been defiled. Crime statistics have skyrocketed. The second and third order consequences of throwing off every sexual more or inhibition has unleashed a kind of cultural pandemonium that includes: vast increases in out-of-wedlock pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, AIDS, rape, and pornography. Abusive perversions abound. This is hardly freedom. The differences between right and wrong cannot be obscured any more than the differences between right and left." Tristan Gylberd (1954-)