Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, [onanism] has the least to recommend it. As an amusement it is too fleeting; as an... occupation it is too wearing; as a public exhibition there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long since been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence--among the best bred these two arts are now indulged only in private--though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo upon the fundamental sigh.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Such writing is a sort of mental masturbation.... I don't mean that he is indecent but viciously soliciting his own ideas into a s...tate which is neither poetry nor anything else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, "Self negation is noble, self-culture is beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the tru...ly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared to self-abuse." Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time--"None know it but to love it, None name it but to praise."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »