Our life-style contains more Thanatos than Eros, for egotism, exploitation, deception, obsession and addiction have more place in us than eroticism, joy, generosity and spontaneity.
The essence of pleasure is spontaneity.
English culture is basically homosexual in the sense that the men only really care about other men.
Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out; it’s one of the most charming things about them.
Act quickly, think slowly.
We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life.
Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?
Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.
A garden is the best alternative therapy.
Developing the muscles of the soul demands no competitive spirit, no killer instinct, although it may erect pain barriers that the spiritual athlete must crash through.
The only causes of regret are laziness, outbursts of temper, hurting others, prejudice, jealousy, and envy.
Every time a man unburdens his heart to a stranger he reaffirms the love that unites humanity.
The blind conviction that we have to do something about other people’s reproductive behavior, and that we may have to do it whether they like it or not, derives from the assumption that the world belongs to us, who have so expertly depleted its resources, rather than to them, who have not.
All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.
Despite a lifetime of service to the cause of sexual liberation, I have never caught venereal disease, which makes me feel rather like an Arctic explorer who has never had frostbite.
I grew up thinking there was one unpardonable sin – to be boring.
The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough.
The struggle which is not joyous is the wrong struggle. The joy of the struggle is not hedonism and hilarity, but the sense of purpose, achievement and dignity.