Debauchery Quotes

“To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have welded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. In general, people savor the "pleasures of the flesh" only on the condition that they may be insipid.”
― Georges Bataille

“We who burrow in filth every day may be forgiven perhaps the one sin that ends all sins.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“The tragedy of Dionysus: Wear a black robe at night, and white you’ll wear by morning; but wear a purple robe to the midnight feast, and when you wake you’ll dress in black to mourn your soul deceased.”
― Roman Payne, Crepuscule

“Intoxication, like sexual euphoria, is the privilege of the human animal.”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“If rape or arson, poison or the knife
Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
Of this drab canvas we accept as life -
It is because we are not bold enough!”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Intoxication, like sexual euphoria, is the privilege of the human animal. Sexual frenzy is our compensation for the tedious moments we must suffer in the passage of life. “Nothing in excess” professed the ancient Greeks. Why, if I spend half the month in healthy scholarship and pleasant sleep, shouldn’t I be allowed the other half to howl at the moon and pillage the groins of Europe’s great beauties?”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“He [Maxime] was twenty, and already there was nothing left to surprise or disgust him. He had certainly dreamt of the most extreme forms of debauchery. Vice with him was not an abyss, as with certain old men, but a natural, external growth.”
― Émile Zola, La Curée

“What is it the Bible teaches us? — repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? — to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“To be a poet is to place pleasure, beauty and sensual delights front and centre, it means having a predilection for debauchery.”
― Nicole Brossard

“O woman, thou art my imperfection!”
― Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy

“Everyone’s mind has sort of a slum division—a flirtatious spot that doesn’t give a hoot about how grave a situation is but constantly endeavors to derail more earnest thoughts, almost like a death-wish backseat driver.”
― Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy

“Still, hell or no hell, it was satisfactory, it was even exciting in those early days to know that one was doing something bad and wrong. But there is in debauchery something so intrinsically dull, something so absolutely and hopelessly dismal, that it is only the rarest beings, gifted with much less than the usual amount of intelligence and much more than the usual intensity of appetite, who can go on actively enjoying a regular course of vice or continue actively to believe in its wickedness. Most habitual debauchees are debauchees not because they enjoy debauchery, but because they are uncomfortable when deprived of it. Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities. The man who has formed a habit of women or gin, of opium-smoking or flagellation, finds it as difficult to live without his vice as to live without bread and water, even though the actual practice of the vice may have become in itself as unexciting as eating a crust or drinking a glass from the kitchen tap. Habit is as fatal to a sense of wrong-doing as to active enjoyment. After a few years the converted or sceptical Jew, the Westernized Hindu, can eat their pork and beef with an equanimity which to their still-believing brothers seems brutally cynical. It is the same with the habitual debauchee. Actions which at first seemed thrilling in their intrinsic wickedness become after a certain number of repetitions morally neutral. A little disgusting, perhaps; for the practice of most vices is followed by depressing physiological reactions; but no longer wicked, because so ordinary. It is difficult for a routine to seem wicked.”
― Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point

“The word "slut" has been invoked in the public discourse as an ugly slur. But Langella's book celebrates sluttiness as a worthy -- even noble -- way of life... When Bette Davis wants to have "racy phone conversations...rife with foreplay," he agrees because how could you not? When Elizabeth Taylor says, "Come on up, baby, and put me to sleep," who is he to resist? (He does make her chase him first.) By his cheerful debauchery, Langella reveals something certain ommmentators have obscured: sluts are the best---hungry for experience and generous wih themselves in its pursuit.”
― Ada Calhoun

“There are flowers growing in hell. Let's go pick them!”
― Naoyuki Ochiai, Syndrôme 1866 T08

“You can’t just jump into debauchery one night and expect to get the hang of it by morning. It takes years.”
― Jennifer Crusie, Strange Bedpersons

“Slim is queer and though Nelson isn't supposed to mind that he does. He also minds that there are a couple of slick blacks making it at the party and that one little white girl with that grayish kind of sharp-chinned Polack face from the south side of Brewer took off her shirt while dancing even though she has no tits to speak of and now sits in the kitchen with still bare tits getting herself sick on Southern Comfort and Pepsi. At these parties someone is always in the bathroom being sick or giving themselves a hit or a snort and Nelson minds this too. He doesn't mind any of it very much, he's just tired of being young. There's so much wasted energy to it.”
― John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich

“Nevertheless man has found love, which is not a bad reply to that sly Deity, and he has adorned it with so much poetry that woman often forgets the sensual part of it. Those among us who are unable to deceive themselves have invented vice and refined debauchery, which is another way of laughing at God and paying homage, immodest homage, to beauty.”
― Guy de Maupassant

“So tonight I'm, pursuing more commercial joys around the bedpost. And I plan to get drunk as a skunk.”
― Valerie Sherwood, These Golden Pleasures

“That night we camped on the shore of a flourishing green land. Around their fires, the men were tense and quiet, muffled by dread. I could hear their whispers, the wine sloshing as they passed it. No man wanted to lie awake imagining tomorrow.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Shame on you. Don't tell me you've been married for an hour and you've already got eyes for another woman.”
― Mordecai Richler

“If you thought with your minds and not your roosters, you would get the point.”
― Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy

“It was the first time I had let go of my inhibitions in aeons. She had the key to the cage of propriety in which I had imprisoned myself. I was introduced to a lifestyle of decadence.”
― Ayshen Irfan, The Fire Within My Heart

“Then you'll see that debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person. It is a jungle without past or future, without any promise of above all, nor any immediate penalty. The places where it is practiced are separated from the world. On entering, one leaves behind fear and hope. Conversation is not obligatory there; what one comes for can be had without words, and often indeed without money. Ah, I beg you, let me pay honor to the unknown and forgotten women who helped me then! Even today, my recollection of them contains something resembling respect.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“Well, I myself, while sometimes unkempt by nights of drunkenness and debauchery, am quite convinced a man’s good character is marked by his impeccable attire.”
― Hal Duncan, Scruffians! Stories of Better Sodomites

“The difference ‘twixt poet and coxcomb is precisely that the latter stops gaps like a ship fitter caulking seams, merely to keep the boat afloat, while the former doth his work as doth a man with a maid: he fills the gap, but with vigor, finesse, and care; there’s beauty and delight as well as utility in his plugging”
― John Barth

“The Président was not the only one with depraved tastes: his three friends, and Durcet in particular, were all rather smitten with this accursed mania for turpitude and debauchery that causes one to find a more picquant charm in old, disgusting and filthy objects than in the most divine of Nature's creations.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“But Sade behaved exactly as if he could not tolerate the possibility that his troubles might be over. He launched immediately into a new bout of provocative debauchery.”
― Ronald Hayman, De Sade: A Critical Biography

“If you'll permit me, the distance that separates debauchery from impiety is far greater than that between debauchery and religious superstition. One does what one likes when safe from reproach under the mantle of religion; but the woman who loves virtue for its own sake and serves it because it inflames her heart, who's brazen and bares her soul—she'll be seen rushing headlong to commit errors she can't hide.”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline and Valcour, or, the Philosophical Novel, Vol. III

“Jazz had stayed with her for three hours. Three, long luxurious hours where he'd pleasured her---to use an old-fashioned word---time after time. And what she'd paid for was good old-fashioned romancing. That had taken her by surprise. All of Jazz's attention had been entirely focused on her body, her desires. He'd managed to push buttons that she didn't even know she had. How many women could say that they got the same service from their husbands? He'd been the ultimate professional, the perfect gentleman. It was hard to see this arrangement as a fairly sleazy business contract. Jazz had seemed to enjoy himself too; either that or the man was a damn fine actor. She closed her eyes and a stream of sexy images washed over her. His attaché case had contained a range of potions, lotions and toys to set the scene for a very naughty evening. He'd drizzled chilled champagne all over her body and had lapped it up with his hot tongue. The thought of it made her shiver with delight.”
― Carole Matthews, The Chocolate Lovers' Club

“His every movement is languorous. It feels dangerous to rest my gaze on him for too long, as though he is so thoroughly debauched that it might be contagious.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King