Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willin...gness to submit to her own annihilation.... The proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Prostitution, when unmotivated by economic need, might well be defined as a species of psychological addiction, built on self-hatr...ed through repetitions of the act of sale by which a whore is defined.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have defined envy as a feeling of pain that a person experiences when he sees someone else possesses something which he does no...t. Jealousy arises when a person possesses something of great value and significance to himself and fears that someone else will deprive him of it. Threats to self-esteem are usually involved in both envy and jealousy, but the situations that provoke them are different and the jealous person will probably be more ready to take overt action to protect what he believes is rightfully his. Overt crimes of passion motivated by jealousy are frequent, whereas crimes of envy tend to be secretive. In general it is shameful to be envious but more acceptable to be jealous in protecting what one rightfully possesses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as ...a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called "self-interestedness." This was not a portrait of man "warts and all." It was all wart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am looking over Self Control again, & my opinion is confirmed of its being an excellently-meant, elegantly-written... Work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discr...iminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count ...for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The glance is natural magic. The mysterious communication established across a house between two entire strangers, moves all the s...prings of wonder. The communication by the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. It is the bodily symbol of identity with nature. We look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his ...unattained but attainable self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crow...n, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »