"Sensualism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flail the follies of his time, he makes his chief characters, in spite of his realistic purpose, extreme and distorted 'humors,' each, in spite of individual traits, the embodiment of some one abstract vice—cowardice, sensualism, hypocrisy, or what not. Too often, also, the unreality is increased because Jonson takes the characters from the stock figures of Latin comedy rather ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... her. They were a diverse pair. She, in her well-preserved beauty, and Gallic artificial grace—he, in his coarse, bloated youth, coarser and worse than the sensualism of middle age. ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... length.—[ED.]] We rejoice to see that she, who expresses such a painful contempt for men in most of her works, as shows she must have known great wrong from them, depicts, in "La Roche Mauprat," a man raised by the workings of love from the depths of savage sensualism to a moral and intellectual life. It was love for a pure object, for a steadfast woman, one of those who, the Italian said, could make ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... throw into their common avocations is their knowledge that if they have leisure, there may come into their chambers, and sit down beside them there, these unwelcome thoughts, that kill mirth. Some of you try to get rid of the Christ out of your boat by another way. You plunge into sensualism, and live in the low, vulgar atmosphere of fleshly delight and sensuous excitements in order to drown thought. And some of you do it by the even simpler process of merely giving no heed to such thoughts when kindled. The fire, unfed and unstirred, goes out. That is one ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Instinct, but is deterred by Conventionalism, is overawed by Idealism, yet attracted, and transiently inspired, but has not steadiness for the initiatory contemplation of the Actual. He conjoins its snatched privileges with a besetting sensualism, and suffers at once from the horror of the one and the disgust of the other, involving the innocent in the fatal conflict of his spirit. When on the point of perishing, he is rescued by Idealism, and, unable to rise to that species of existence, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the Middle Classes will signify) is a still worse, while it lasts. Properly, indeed, it is the worst and basest of all banners, and symbols of dominion among men; and indeed is possible only in a time of general Atheism, and Unbelief in any thing save in brute Force and Sensualism; pride of birth, pride of office, any known kind of pride being a degree better than purse-pride. Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood: not in the Moneybag, but far elsewhere, will Sansculottism ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... register clearly the general conviction that if black magic, sorcery, and the Sabbath up to date had been merely revived demonomania, had been merely concerned with the black paternoster, the black mass, or even with transcendental sensualism and the ordeal of the pastos, the Roman hierarchy would not have taken action as it has, nor would the witnesses concerning these things have been welcomed with open arms; as a fact, no interest whatsoever is manifested in the doings of diabolists who operate ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... chance escaped destruction show very plainly a transition from pure idealism to the most intense sensualism. ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... of the world, that a well-nourished body is inimical to what they chose to term "spiritual development." The historic Christian outcry against fleshly indulgence has much more in it than a revolt against mere sensualism. A well-fed body has been deprecated because it closed the avenue to spiritual illumination. Hence it is that fasting has found such favour in all religious systems. The ascetic saw more because, by reducing the body to an abnormal state, he provided the conditions for seeing more. The Zulu ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... opposition and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which presides at marriages with words that take hold of the upper world, whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so that its gravest discourse has a savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... other estates present. One of them had been an overseer for forty years, and he possessed the looks and feelings which we suppose a man who has been thus long in a school of despotism, must possess. He had a giant form, which seemed to be breaking down with luxury and sensualism. His ordinary voice was hoarse and gusty, and his smile diabolical. Emancipation had swept away his power while it left the love of it ravaging his heart. He could not speak of the new system with composure. His contempt and hatred of the negro was unadulterated. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... labor and their freedom. The same condition of things, with some variation, of course, arising from differences of climate and races, exists in Russia, and the results are not altogether dissimilar. We find idleness, lack of principle, overbearing manners, ignorance, and sensualism a very common characteristic of the superior classes, mingled though it may be with a show of fine manners, and such trivial and superficial accomplishments as may be obtained without much labor. It is a great negro plantation on a large scale, in which the gradation of powers has a depressing ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the mushroom, awabi, various other shells and possibly the fire-drill. It is only in the decay of the cultus, in the change of view and centre of thought compelled by another religion, that representations of the old emblems ally themselves with sensualism or immorality. It is that natural degradation of one man's god into another man's devil, which conversion must almost of necessity bring, that makes the once revered symbol "obscene," and talk about it ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... her relationship with Harding. She loved him, but more through the imagination than the heart. She knew he was deceiving her, but to her he meant so much that she had not the force of will to cast him off, and abandoned herself to the intellectual sensualism of his society. It was this, and nothing more. What her love might have been it is not necessary to analyze; in the present circumstances, it was completely merged in the knowledge that he was to her, light, freedom, and instruction, and that when he left, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... Michael Angelo in Rome, and Tintoret in Venice. The subsequent history of Italian painting is occupied with its revival under the influences of the counter-Reformation, when a new religious sentiment, emasculated and ecstatic, was expressed in company with crude naturalism and cruel sensualism ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... sentimental literature. But it will become clear not only that there can be a popular erotic literature of a quite different order, but that I might have subdivided this class into two: one concerned with the popular literature of passion, the other with that of sensualism. There is, of course, a sentiment of love which is sufficiently considered in the last section. But I have made a distinction between sentiment and passion, which for my view is important; and I must add the further and more obvious distinction ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... as his virtues, and infinitely more picturesque. Large as was his income, and it was the third largest of all professional men in London, it was far beneath the luxury of his living. Deep in his complex nature lay a rich vein of sensualism, at the sport of which he placed all the prizes of his life. The eye, the ear, the touch, the palate, all were his masters. The bouquet of old vintages, the scent of rare exotics, the curves and tints of the daintiest potteries of Europe, it was to ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and there in the arms of her partner, a slender youth with long black hair. In the figure of the dancing woman there was expressed much of the idealism man has sought to materialise in women and McGregor was thrilled by it. A sensualism so delicate that it did not appear to be sensualism began to invade him. With a new hunger he looked forward to the time when he would again ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... Benito, not forgetting La Roca Estrecha, a singular natural fissure; the highest and most interesting of all is the S. Jeronimo. These retreats satisfied the Oriental and Spanish tendency to close a life of action by repose, and atone for past sensualism by mortification. The hermitages were once thirteen in number; each was separate, and with difficulty accessible. The anchorite who once entered one, never left it again. There he lived, like things bound within a cold rock alive, while all was stone around, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... on the mind than would have been the gross mirth and broad jesting of a similar number of uneducated plebeians. The rude licentiousness of an uncultivated boor has its safety-valve in disgust and satiety, . . but the soft, enervating sensualism of a trained and cultured epicurean aristocrat is a moral poison whose effects are so insidious as to be scarcely felt till all the native nobility of character has withered, and naught is left of a man but the shadow-wreck ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... what he termed external epidemic influences: he now endeavoured to free himself not only from all current conventions, but from every association which he had formerly cherished. Self-analysis and general observation had taught him that men are sensual beings, and that sensualism must die for want of food if it were not for sex instincts, if it were not for Art, and especially for Music. This view of life he forcibly expressed in the "Kreutzer Sonata," in which Woman and Music, the two magnets of his ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... spiritualize it so that the mere drawing of breath is at once a keen delight and an inwardly felt practical act of praise to the God of a strong and beautiful world. Morris too has his sensuous element, but it is utterly unlike Chaucer's; it is dilettante, it is amateur sensualism; it is not strong, though sometimes excessive, and it is nervously afraid of that satiety which is at once its chief temptation and its ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... all save John, the beloved disciple, and a few women who bowed in silent woe beneath the shadow of his cross. The earthly 36:15 price of spirituality in a material age and the great moral distance between Christianity and sensualism preclude Christian Science from finding favor with the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... contented, virtuous, and patriotic of mankind—were composed at a time when the English Navy was principally manned by felons and paupers, as mentioned in a former chapter. Still more, these songs are pervaded by a true Mohammedan sensualism; a reckless acquiescence in fate, and an implicit, unquestioning, dog-like devotion to whoever may be lord and master. Dibdin was a man of genius; but no wonder Dibdin was a government ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... never described it adequately, faithfully. In one or two instances, he obtains a glimpse of it—as Moses obtained a vision of the promised land—from afar; when he tries to get nearer, he presents us with mere sensualism. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... and well enough managed. The Teutonic character has always instinctively revolted against the practice of celibacy, a form of ascetism quite natural, and sometimes perhaps inevitable, as a reaction against the unbridled sensualism of the Africans and Asiatics, but quite out of place in climes so temperate and races so moderate, conscientious, and self-respecting as those of Northern Europe. It needed all the genius and determination of Hildebrand himself to enforce the celibacy ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... fascinated, and fitted to hide blemishes which repelled. On the one hand his expressive features and shapely figure went far towards creating a charm which his personal grace and courtesy of manner completed; on the other, his delicate tact screened the heartlessness of his sensualism, whilst his surface sympathies hid the ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They despair of truth. But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on virtue. But it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral governor, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... of the human kind, represents the volupty and the sensualism. Her posture, the expression of her figure, render well the abandonment of the passion with ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... purpose, and not any purpose of gratification to unhallowed curiosity; we speak of the question about the reversionary rights of marriage in a future state. This memorable case, by the way, sufficiently exposes the gross, infantine sensualism of the Jewish mind at that period, and throws an indirect light on their creed as to demons. With this one exception, standing by itself and self-explained, there never was a gleam of revelation granted by any authorized ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... confounded and blended in one immense and unique love. Who has not been, unless perhaps some dusty old pedant, thrilled and driven to pleasure by the action of a book that penetrates to and speaks to you of your most present and most intimate emotions. This is of course pure sensualism; but to take a less marked stage. Why should Marlowe enchant me? why should he delight and awake enthusiasm in me, while Shakespeare leaves me cold? The mind that can understand one can understand the other, but there ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... whole tone of the letter is in keeping with the alleged author's temperament. It is respectful, but far from servile. Gowrie is a great Earl, but Logan is of an old and good name. There is the genial sensualism of the man, with his promise of wine and 'a fine hattit kit' (a kind of syllabub). There is the joyous forward glance at an anniversary dinner, with Bothwell, to which the King's hunting of this year shall furnish the dainty cheer; 'hoc jocose!' ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... Maltravers. Like so many decepti deceptores of the Neo-Platonic school, he did not practise the abnegation enjoined by the very cult he professed to follow. Though his nature was far too refined, I believe, ever to sink into the sensualism revealed in Temple's diaries, yet it was through the gratification of corporeal tastes that he endeavoured to achieve the divine extasis; and there were constantly lavish and sumptuous entertainments at the villa, at which strange guests ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner |
