Then the question began to live under my blankets: How did lesbianism begin? What were the symptoms? The public library gave infor...mation on the finished lesbian--and that woefully sketchy--but on the growth of a lesbian, there was nothing. I did discover that the difference between hermaphrodites and lesbians was that hermaphrodites were "born that way." It was impossible to determine whether lesbians budded gradually, or burst into being with a suddenness that dismayed them as much as it repelled society.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Can the knowledge deriving from reason even begin to compare with knowledge perceptible by sense? No doubt the number of people cr...ass enough to reply exclusively on the former and scorn the latter are sufficient in themselves to explain the disfavor into which everything deriving from the senses has gradually fallen. But when the most scholarly of men have taught me that light is a vibration, or offered me any other fruits of their labors of reasoning, they will not have rendered me an account of what is important to me about light, of what my eyes have begun to teach me about it, of what makes me different from a blind man--things which are the stuff of miracles, not subject matter for reasoning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alone with our madness and favorite flower We see that there really is nothing left to write about.... Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things In the same way, repeating the same things over and over For love to continue and be gradually different.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some parents feel that if they introduce their children to alcohol gradually in the home environment, the children will learn to u...se alcohol in moderation. I'm not sure that's such a good idea. First of all, alcohol is not healthy for the growing child. Second, introducing alcohol to a child suggests that you condone drinking--even to the point where you want to teach your child how to drink.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Between women love is contemplative; caresses are intended less to gain possession of the other than gradually to re-create the se...lf through her; separateness is abolished, there is no struggle, no victory, no defeat; in exact reciprocity each is at once subject and object, sovereign and slave; duality become mutuality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a proces...s of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The se...nsation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the y...ears it gets to be long enough for you pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. It's another thing, though, to hold up that cloth for inspection.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »