I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn’t last long. I’m the modern, intelligent, independent-type of woman. In other words, a girl who can’t get a man.
Shelley Winters (1920–2006), American actress
A lady is nothing very specific. One man’s lady is another man’s woman; sometimes, one man’s lady’s another man’s wife. Definitions overlap but they almost never coincide.
Russell Lynes (1910–1991), American editor of Harper’s magazine
A lady is one who never shows her underwear unintentionally.
Lillian Day, American writer
There are only about 20 murders a year in London and many not at all serious – some are just husbands killing their wives.
Commander G.H. Hatherill of Scotland Yard, 1954
Legislation and case law still exist in some parts of the United States permitting the ‘passion shooting by husband of a wife’; the reverse, of course, is known as homicide.
Diane Schulder, American lawyer, in Sisterhood is Powerful by Robin Morgan, 1970
He would stand the chance of violent sexual abuse and becoming a homosexual if sent to a state prison.
Judge Robert C. Abel (c.1932–2000), explaining why be had given a sentence of only 120 days to a man found guilty of raping and beating a woman
I am not saying that a girl hitching home late at night should not be protected by the law, but she was guilty of a great deal of contributory negligence.
Bertrand Richards, British judge, during a rape case, 1982
My lesbianism is an act of Christian charity. All those women out there are praying for a man, and I’m giving them my share.
Rita Mae Brown, American feminist writer
Our sexuality is used only when film-makers want to spice up the plot … we’re never shown in a realistic light.
Lesbian activist protesting about Hollywood’s unfair representation of gay people
Male heckler: Are you a lesbian?
Florynce: Are you my alternative?
Florynce R. Kennedy (1916–2000), American lawyer and civil-rights activist
Girls who put out are tramps. Girls who don’t are ladies. This is, however, a rather archaic usage of the word. Should one of you boys happen upon a girl who doesn’t put out, do not jump to the conclusion that you have found a lady. What you have probably found is a lesbian.
Fran Lebowitz, American writer
Once you know what women are like, men get kind of boring. I’m not trying to put them down, I mean I like them sometimes as people, but sexually they’re dull.
Rita Mae Brown, American feminist writer
Lesbianism has always seemed to me an extremely inventive response to the shortage of men but otherwise not worth the trouble.
Nora Ephron (1941–2012), American screenwriter and director, in Heartburn, 1983
The Well of Loneliness, a novel by Radclyffe Hall, which treates of intimate relationships between women, was withdrawn on the advice of the Home Secretary, to whom the publishers submitted it for an opinion. But this was not before it had been condemned by the editor of the Sunday Express, who declared he ‘would sooner give a healthy boy or girl a dose of prussic acid than a copy of it’.
Report in the Daily Telegraph, 1928
Refusal to make herself the object is not always what turns women to homosexuality: most lesbians, on the contrary, seek to cultivate the treasures of their femininity.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), French writer, in The Second Sex, 1949
I discarded the whole book because the leading character wasn’t on my wavelength. She was a lesbian with doubts about her masculinity.
Peter de Vries (1910–1993), American editor and writer, in the New York Times, 1967
Don’t say we are here because we get sexual gratification from seeing these women playing.
Lesbian attending the Pilkington Glass Ladies Tennis Championships 1992, in which Martina Navratilova was playing
What’s the point of being a lesbian if a woman is going to look and act like an imitation man?
Rita Mae Brown, American feminist writer
I never said I was a dyke even to a dyke because there wasn’t a dyke in the land who thought she should be a dyke or even thought she was a dyke so how could we talk about it.
Jill Johnston (1929–2010), American feminist writer, in Lesbian Nation, 1973
My sexuality has never been a problem to me but I think it has been for other people.
Dusty Springfield (1939–1999), British singer
By the time you say you’re his
Shivering and sighing
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying –
Lady, make a note of this
One of you is lying.
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967), American wit
The tombstone is about the only thing that can stand upright and lie on its face at the same time.
Mary Wilson Little, American singer in The Supremes
He led a double life. Did that make him a liar? He did not feel a liar. He was a man of two truths.
Iris Murdoch (1919–1999), British novelist, in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
Only lies and evil come from letting people off.
Iris Murdoch, in A Severed Head
Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But it’s usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretences so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.
Jim Morrison (1943–1971), American lead singer of The Doors
Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.
Barbara Bush, wife of President George Bush, on the inquiry into President Clinton’s sexual exploits
If I had my life to live again, I’d make the same mistakes – only sooner.
Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968), American actress
A lot of love-making and a little abuse; a little fame and more abuse; a real man and great happiness; the love of children and seventh heaven; an early death and a crowded memorial service.
Margot Asquith (1865–1945), wife of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith (1864–1945), summing up her life
I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.
Jenny Joseph, British poet
Life is too short to dissect the nitty-gritty of your love life.
Janet Street-Porter, British journalist
A life is more valuable than a penis.
Lisa Kemler, defence attorney for Lorena Bobbitt, who cut off her husband’s penis on discovering his infidelity
Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer’s daughter.
Julius H. Comroe, Jr (1911–1984), American surgeon, in What Does That Mean? Exploring Mind, Meaning and Mysteries by Eldon Taylor, 2010
It doesn’t bother me to talk about my private life, it doesn’t bother me to talk about anything. My life is like a glass of water, transparent.
Shakira, Colombian singer
You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.
Woody Allen, American actor and film-maker
I feel like I’m too old to just have sex. I mean, I want to have sex, but with somebody who loves me.
Teri Hatcher, American actress
She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Irish playwright
She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak.
Woody Allen, American actor and film-maker, in Getting Even, 1973
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), American novelist, in Farewell, My Lovely, 1940
She was a vivacious girl, not pretty by any accepted standards, if anything ugly by any accepted standards, but she could speak Latin and foot a quadrille and sometimes the two simultaneously if the tempo was right.
Denis Norden, British comedy writer, in Upon My Word, 1974
She got her looks from her father – he’s a plastic surgeon.
Groucho Marx (1880–1977), American comedian
The less I behave like Whistler’s Mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.
Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968), American actress
Just like Winnie; like a barracks in a pinny, gave up food for Lent, weight loss was fantastic, but her skin was not elastic, like an inefficient camper in a creased pink tent.
Victoria Wood, British comedienne
… so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly bound hymn-book.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Irish playwright, in The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wearing very tight striped pants, he looked like a bifurcated marrow … like a pensionable cherub.
Clive James, Australian broadcaster, on Rod Stewart
Young and handsome … looks like his teeth will stay in all night.
Victoria Wood, British comedienne, describing an ideal man
A woman with cut hair is a filthy spectacle, and much like a monster; and all repute it a very great absurdity for a woman to walk abroad with shorn hair; for this is all one as if she should take upon her the form or person of a man, to whom short cut hair is proper.
William Prynne (1600–1669), British lawyer and polemicist, in Histriomastix, 1669
I’ve got saggy breasts and a low-slung ass … but I can still get men.
Édith Piaf (1915–1963), French singer
A plumber’s idea of Cleopatra.
W.C. Fields (1880–1946), American actor and comedian, describing Mae West
Good girls come in wee bulk.
Helen Liddell, British Labour Party politician, describing her height
Sex keeps me fit and healthy. What can be better than that? It’s not about crazy diets or gym workouts.
Kelly Brook, British model and actress
Heart throbs are a dime a dozen.
Brad Pitt, American actor
Just another four-letter word.
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983), American playwright
If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), American writer
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967), American wit
To fall in love you have to be in a state of mind for it to take, like a disease.
Nancy Mitford (1904–1973), British writer and one of the Mitford sisters
I could follow him around the world in my shift.
Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587), on James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell
If it is your time, love will track you down like a Cruise missile. If you say ‘No! I don’t want it right now’, that’s when you’ll get it for sure. Love will make a way out of no way. Love is an exploding cigar which we willingly smoke.
Lynda Barry, American cartoonist and writer
Love is so much better when you are not married.
Maria Callas (1923–1977), American-born Greek soprano
Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.
Mel Brooks, American film-maker
Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.
Andy Warhol (1928–1987), American artist
People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions; the most common of these being that other people find your condition as thrilling and eye-watering as you do yourselves.
Julian Barnes, British novelist
I can see from your utter misery, from your eagerness to misunderstand each other, and from your thoroughly bad temper, that this is the real thing.
Peter Ustinov (1921–2004), British writer and actor, in Romanoff & Juliet, 1957
Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.
Judith Viorst, American writer, in Redbook, 1975
I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon. I cannot understand the love affair.
Gore Vidal (1925–2012), American writer and wit
I have never loved anyone for love’s sake, except perhaps Josephine – a little.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), French military leader
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I’ve ever known.
Walt Disney (1901–1966), American animator and business magnate
Desperate madness.
John Ford (1894–1973), American film director
Romantic love is mental illness. But it’s a pleasurable one. It’s a drug. It distorts reality, and that’s the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw.
Fran Lebowitz, American writer
Love has no great influences upon the sum of life.
Dr Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), British writer and lexicographer
If the rustle of a woman’s petticoat has ever stirred my blood, of what matter is that to any reader?
Anthony Trollope (1815–1882), British novelist, on being asked why no reference to love appeared in his two-volume autobiography
Love: woman’s eternal spring and man’s eternal fall.
Helen Rowland (1875–1950), American writer and humorist
If love be good, from whence cometh my woe?
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), British poet, known as the Father of English Literature
Love is what you feel for a dog or a pussycat. It doesn’t apply to humans.
Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon), British singer and former member of the Sex Pistols
You need someone to love you, while you’re looking for someone to love.
Shelagh Delaney, British playwright, in A Taste of Honey, 1958
‘Yes,’ I answered you last night; ‘No,’ this morning, ‘Sir,’ I say.
Colours seen by candlelight will not look the same by day.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), British poet
A grave mental disease.
Plato (427–347 BC), Greek philosopher
It’s the nature of women not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), Spanish writer
Had we never lov’d sae kindly,
Had we never lov’d sae blindly,
Never met – or never parted,
We had ne’er been broken hearted.
Robert Burns (1759–1796), Scottish poet, in ‘Ae Fond Kiss’
Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses.
Lord Arthur Dewar (1860–1917), British politician and Liberal MP for Edinburgh South
Night of love descend!
Make me forget that I am alive.
Richard Wagner (1813–1883), German composer, in Tristan und Isolde, 1865
The heart can do anything.
Molière (1622–1673), French playwright
Love is often a consequence of marriage.
Molière, in Sganarelle
The whole pleasure of love lies in the variety.
Molière, in Don Juan
The heaviest object in the world is the body of the woman you have ceased to love.
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747), French writer and close friend of Voltaire
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
Lord Henry, in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Irish playwright
I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker Brothers and they are going to make a game out of it.
Woody Allen, American actor and film-maker
In literature as in love we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
André Maurois (1885–1967), French novelist and writer
Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love.
Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979), American businessman and philanthropist, to Henry Kissinger
Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
Franklin P. Jones (1908–1980), American journalist
Platonic love is love from the neck up.
Thyra Samter Winslow (1885–1961), American writer
Let there be spaces in your togetherness.
Kahil Gibran (1883–1931), Lebanese poet
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
Anatole France (1844–1924), French writer
Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
Robert Browning (1812–1889), British poet
I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.
Robert Frost (1874–1963), American poet
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), British philosopher
Faults are thick where love is thin.
James Howell (1594–c.1666), British writer and historian
The head is always the dupe of the heart.
François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), French writer
If love makes the world go round, why are we going to outer space?
Margaret Gilman
Love your enemy – it will drive him nuts.
Eleanor Doan, British children’s author
How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with someone younger than yourself. Everyone should try it.
Barbara Pym (1913–1980), British novelist
A narcissism shared by two.
Rita Mae Brown, American feminist writer
Something you have to make … It’s all work, work.
Joyce Cary (1888–1957), Irish novelist
The drug which makes sexuality palatable in popular mythology.
Germaine Greer, Australian feminist writer
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Dr Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), British writer and lexicographer, in Johnsonian Miscellanies, 1784
Such ever was love’s way; to rise, it stoops.
Robert Browning (1812–1889), British poet, in A Death in the Desert, 1864
Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
Erich Segal (1937–2010), American writer, in Love Story, 1970
Love will never be ideal until man recovers from the illusion that he can be just a little bit faithful or a little bit married.
Helen Rowland (1875–1950), American writer and humorist
Some women and men seem to need each other.
Gloria Steinem, American feminist writer
Falling out of love is very enlightening; for a short while you see the world with new eyes.
Iris Murdoch (1919–1999), British novelist
If you can stay in love for more than two years, you’re on something.
Fran Lebowitz, American writer
Security is when I’m very much in love with somebody extraordinary who loves me back.
Shelley Winters (1920–2006), American actress
A woman that loves to be at the windows is like a bunch of grapes in the highway.
American proverb
I have had two great loves in my life. Mike Todd was the first.
Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011), British actress
A woman despises a man for loving her, unless she returns his love.
Elizabeth Drew Stoddard (1823–1902), American writer
We don’t believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.
Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916), Austrian writer
Love is moral without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.
Ellen Key (1849–1926), Swedish writer, in The Morality of Women, 1911
It seems to me that he has never loved, that he has only imagined that he has loved, that there has been no real love on his part. I even think that he is incapable of love; he is too much occupied with other thoughts and ideas to become strongly attached to anyone earthly.
Anna Dostoevsky (1846–1918), Russian diarist, on her husband, Fyodor Dostoevsky
True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.
François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), French writer
People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the common bacillus.
Marcél Proust (1871–1922), French writer
Love is a disease that fills you with a desire to be desired.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), French painter
The woman one loves always smells good.
Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915), French writer and critic
Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626), British philosopher, inhis essay Of Love, 1597
Love is the self-delusion we manufacture to justify the trouble we take to have sex.
Dan Greenburg, American film-maker
Love is so different with men!
Robert Browning (1812–1889), British poet, in ‘In a Year, IX’
Rick: I mean, what am I supposed to call you? My girlfriend? My companion? My room-mate? Nothing sounds quite right.
Joanie: How about your reason for living?
Rick: No, no, I need something I can use around the office.
Garry Trudeau, American cartoonist and creator of the Doonesbury cartoons
By the end of those six weeks, you are either in love or you can’t stand the sight of each other. But for us, it worked out. I have such great expectations of our future together. I have never been so happy.
David Bowie, British singer, on a cruise he took with his new wife Iman, in Hello! magazine, 1992
You’ve got to love something enough to kill it.
Martin Scorsese, American film director
Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.
James Thurber (1894–1961), American writer and cartoonist, quoted in Life magazine, 1960
Love, though a very acute disorder in Andalusia, puts on a very chronic shape in these high northern latitudes; for first the lover must prove metaphysically that he ought to; and then in the fifth or sixth year of courtship, or rather argument, if the summer is tolerable warm, and oat meal plenty, the fair one yields.
Sydney Smith (1771–1845), British writer and Anglican cleric, in a letter to Lady Holland
Love is 2 minutes 52 seconds of squishing noises. It shows your mind isn’t clicking right.
Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon), British singer and former member of the Sex Pistols
Love, love, love – all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys, blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its barrenness.
Germaine Greer, Australian feminist writer, in The Female Eunuch, 1970
Once a woman has given you her heart, you can never get rid of the rest of her.
Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), British playwright, in The Relapse, 1696
Because women can do nothing except love, they’ve given it a ridiculous importance.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), British novelist, in The Moon and Sixpence, 1919
Between women love is contemplative … there is no struggle, no victory, no defeat; in exact reciprocity, each is at once subject and object, sovereign and slave; duality becomes mutuality.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), French writer, in The Second Sex, 1949
Now what is Love, I pray thee, tell?
…
It is a pretty kind of sporting fray,
It is a thing will soon away;
…
It is also a toothache or like pain;
It is a game where none doth gain.
Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618), British explorer
I want the deepest, darkest, sickest parts of you that you are afraid to share with anyone, because I love you that much.
Lady Gaga, American singer, clarifying the meaning of her lyrics in interview with Alexa Chung in 2009
Americans make love worse than any other race on earth.
Walt Whitman (1819–1892), American poet
The one you love and the one who loves you are never ever the same person.
Chuck Palahniuk, American writer, in Invisible Monsters
To me love is being able to go to bed with someone and feel better about them when you wake up the next morning.
Sylvester Stallone, American actor
Before I met my husband, I’d never fallen in love, though I’ve stepped in it a few times.
Rita Rudner, American actress and comedienne
I love that feeling of being in love, the effect of having butterflies when you wake up in the morning. That’s special.
Jennifer Aniston, American actress
If Jack’s in love, he’s no judge of Jill’s beauty.
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States
Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it.
Maurice Chevalier (1888–1972), French singer and actor
Be so good as to tell me … who is against my having any shirts. You can deny clean linen to the inmates of a hospital; but I do not intend to go without it. How your meanness, that of your origin and that of your parents, shines forth in your every act! My dove, the day I so far forgot what I was that I could be willing to sell you what I am, it may have been to get you under the covers – but it wasn’t to go uncovered.
Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), French aristocrat, known for his erotic writing, speaking to his wife
I will marry you so gladly with the old marriage service: for better or worse, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others – until death do us part, Ha! Ha!
Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961), American journalist and radio broadcaster, to her intended, Sinclair Lewis
Loving you is like loving a red-hot poker, which is a worse bedfellow than even Lytton’s umbrella; every caress brings on agony.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), British philosopher, to Ottoline Morrell
I could not love thee, dear, so much if I did not love my freedom more.
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), German composer, to soprano Agatha Von Siebold, breaking their engagement
You must make a serious effort to change, my dear Clara … passions are not a natural adjunct to human nature, they are always exceptional or aberrant … look on yourself as ill, dear Clara, seriously ill.
Johannes Brahms, to German pianist Clara Schumann
If we love we must not live as other men and women do. I cannot brook the wolfsbane of fashion and foppery and tattle. You must be mine to die upon the rack if I want you … Goodbye! I kiss you – O the torments!
John Keats (1795–1821), British poet, to Fanny Brawne, to whom he was engaged until his death
Almost everything you have asked for – with the exception of a mink coat – I have given you. But you show no appreciation – only boredom, discontent. You can’t bear to remain at home of an evening. If you do, it is only to cut your toenails.
Henry Miller (1891–1980), American writer, to his fifth wife
I will not meet you at the pier, as it will probably be chilly.
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), Russian playwright, to Olga Knipper
I wouldn’t give up one minute of my time with Richard Burton … We were like magnets, alternating pulling towards each other and inexorably pushing away.
Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011), British actress
All mankind loves a lover.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), American writer, in Love
My life was better before I knew you.
Edith Wharton (1862–1937), American writer, to Morton Fullerton, a correspondent for The Times, with whom she had a long affair
I am so anxious for you not to abdicate and I think the fact that you do is going to put me in the wrong light to the entire world because they will say that I could have prevented it.
Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (1896–1986), to Edward VIII
Please bring my flute.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), British poet, to his wife, informing her that he had eloped with Mary Godwin and asking her to join them
I hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul. No, give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of crow’s feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong.
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Irish playwright, to Mrs Patrick Campbell, an actress with whom he had an amusing correspondence
I love the bitch to death.
Keith Richards, British musician with The Rolling Stones, on his wife
Darling Laura, sweet whiskers, do try to write me better letters. Your last, dated 19 December received today, so eagerly expected, was a bitter disappointment. Do realise that a letter need not be a bald chronicle of events; I know you lead a dull life now, my heart bleeds for it, though I believe you could make it more interesting if you had the will. But that is no reason to make your letters as dull as your life. I simply am not interested in Bridget’s children, do grasp that.
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966), British novelist, to his wife
Dear United States Army:
My husband asked me to write a recommend that he supports his family. He cannot read, so don’t tell him. Just take him. He ain’t no good to me. He ain’t done nothing but raise hell and drink lemon essence since I married him eight years ago, and I got to feed seven kids of his. Maybe you can get him to carry a gun. He’s good on squirrels and eating. Take him and welcome. I need the grub and his bed for the kids. Don’t tell him this, but just take him.
Anonymous letter hand-delivered in 1943 by an Arkansas man to his draft board
I’ve always been interested in lust, and everybody has lusted for someone at some time in their lives. It’s human nature. The fact is, whether they acted it out or not, there’s a carnal chemical reaction that’s fascinating – especially if someone acted on it and then lost control of their life after their animal side took over.
Michael Douglas, American actor
It is very Victorian of the council to think that the ladies of Darlington will lose control at the sight of a few male bodies.
Rita Fishwick (1942–2002), American former Mayor of Darlington, on a decision to ban a male strip show
No, not too old at fifty-three a worn defeated fool like me. Still the tickling lust devours long stretches of my waking hours. Busty girls in flowered scanties hitching down St Michael panties. Easing off their wet-look boots, to step into their birthday suits.
Wicksteed, in Habeas Corpus by Alan Bennett, British playwright
Thunder and lightning, wars, fires, plagues, have not done that mischief to mankind as this burning lust.
Robert Burton (1577–1640), British philosopher, in Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621
It is even possible, quite often, to spot women on the pill from a certain deadness about their flesh, lustiness about their eyes and lifelessness in their movements.
Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990), British writer and satirist, speaking on BBC television, 1965
They are much more amorous than men, and as sparrows do not live long, because they are too hot and too susceptible to love, so women last less time; because they have a devouring heat, that consumes them by degrees.
Nicolas Venette (1633–1698), French physician, explaining why women have a shorter life expectancy than men
Dancing is the perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Irish playwright
I doubt a girl would ever be satisfied with her lover’s mind if she knew the whole of it.
Anthony Trollope (1815–1882), British novelist, in The Small House at Allington, 1864
‘Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), British novelist
I haven’t had sex with enough Americans to generalise. You’d have to have sex with somebody from every state, and the last time I checked, I’ve missed North and South Dakota, Maine and Alaska. I did screw an Eskimo once, but she wasn’t an American citizen. Ever try to make love in a kayak?
Lewis Grizzard (1946–1994), American writer, on being asked if Americans were good lovers
Here is a sad slaughter at Windsor, the young men taking your leaves and going to France, and, although they are none of my lovers, yet I am loath to part with the men.
Nell Gwynn (1650–1687), British actress and mistress of King Charles II, in a letter to Madam Jennings
All really great lovers are articulate, and verbal seduction is the surest road to actual seduction.
Marya Mannes (1904–1990), American author
All of my sexual experiences when I was young were with girls. I mean we didn’t have those sleepovers for nothing. I think that’s really normal; same sex experimentation.
Madonna, American singer
Remember, if you smoke after sex you’re doing it too fast.
Woody Allen, American actor and film-maker
Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and a bottle.
James Joyce (1882–1941), Irish writer, in Ulysses
License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
John Donne (1572–1631), British poet
All witchcraft comes from carnal lust which, in women, is insatiable.
Heinrich Kramer (c.1430–1505) and Jakob Sprenger (c.1436–1495), German Catholic clergymen
Females are naturally libidinous, incite the males to copulation, and cry out during the act of coition.
Aristotle (384–322 BC), Greek philosopher, in Historia Animalium
To leap into a great vessel of cold water, or to put nettles in the codpiece.
Andrew Boorde (1490–1549), British physician, describing a cure for lust
Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936), British writer
No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956), American writer and humorist
I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success.
J. Paul Getty (1892–1976), American philanthropist
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Irish playwright
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), French writer
The chief cause of unhappiness in married life is that people think that marriage is sex attraction which takes the form of promises and hopes and happiness – a view supported by public opinion and by literature. But marriage cannot cause happiness. Instead, it is always torture, which man has to pay for satisfying his sex urge.
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), Russian novelist
Spouses are impediments to great enterprises.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626), British philosopher
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.
Socrates (469–399 BC), Greek philosopher
If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), Russian playwright
If they only married when they fell in love, most people would die unwed.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), British writer
David and I ate Dover sole, Kimberley ate Mr Blunkett.
Petronella Wyatt, British journalist, describing the lunch when she was introduced to David Blunkett, Labour politician, and Kimberley Quinn, with whom he had an affair
Lust will curdle like milk if you don’t keep using it up.
Anon
You know that look that women have when they want to have sex? Me neither.
Steve Martin, American actor
I felt like an animal, and animals don’t know sin, do they?
Jess C. Scott, American novelist
Let’s face it, when an attractive but aloof man comes along, there are some of us who offer to shine his shoes with our underpants.
Lynda Barry, American cartoonist and writer
My schoolmates would make love to anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself.
Emo Philips, American comedian