# Human sexual activity

Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality.
Arranged alphabetically by author or source: A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Dialogue · See also · External links

## A

* It is if you're doing it right.
** Woody Allen, when asked "Is sex dirty?" on The Dick Cavett Show (20 October 1971)
* For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.
** Isabel Allende, Of Love and Shadows (1984)
* In the old days a lot of people, men as well as women, didn't quite know what to expect from sex so they didn't worry when it didn't work too well.
** Kingsley Amis, Jake's Thing (1978)
* While God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone'. He also created a woman, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.
** Anonymous, Alphabet of Sirach, as reported in Naomi M. Hyman, Biblical Women in the Midrash (1998), p. 8
* There was a young pair of Aberystwyth Who united the organs they kissed with. But as they grew older They also grew bolder, And united the organs they pissed with.
** Anonymous, Lapses in Limerick (Michigan, MS., 1938); in G. Legman, The Limerick (Citadel Press, 1979), p. 372
* Remember the good old days when the air was clean and sex was dirty?
** Anonymous, as reported in James C. Hefley, Sex, Sense, and Nonsense (1971), p. 7; sometimes attributed to George Burns
* Proeliare et fortiter proeliare, nec enim tibi cedam nec terga vertam. Comminus in aspectum, si vir es, derige, et grassare naviter et occide moriturus. Hodierna pugna non habet missionem.
** Now is come the houre of justing, now is come the time of warre, wherefore shew thy selfe like unto a man, for I will not retyre, I will not fly the field, see then thou bee valiant, see thou be couragious, since there is no time appointed when our skirmish shall cease.
** Apuleius, The Golden Ass, bk. 2 ch. 10, par. 17, as translated by William Adlington (1566)
* What food is to a man's well being, such is sexual intercourse to the welfare of the whole human race.
** Augustine of Hippo, De Bono Coniugali, ch. 16; later quoted by Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part 2, question 153, article 2, adding: "Wherefore just as the use of food can be without sin, if it be taken in due manner and order, as required for the welfare of the body, so also the use of venereal acts can be without sin, provided they be performed in due manner and order, in keeping with the end of human procreation."
* [N]ecessary sexual intercourse for begetting is free from blame, and itself is alone worthy of marriage. But that which goes beyond this necessity, no longer follows reason, but lust.
** Augustine of Hippo, The Good of Marriage, ch. 11, as translated in A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church (Oxford, 1847), p. 287

## B

* Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.
** James Baldwin, "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy", in Esquire (May 1961)
* Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble.
** John Barrymore, as quoted by Oliver Gaspirtz, Famous Quotes About Sex (2017)
* Yes, I haven't had enough sex.
** Sir John Betjeman, British poet laureate. He had been asked whether he had any regrets, in an interview for the television documentary Time with Betjeman (February 1983)
* Adamant, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.
** Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
* Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.
** William J. Brennan, Jr., Writing for the court, Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957)
* "Natural" is a very dangerous word to use about sexuality … Our society's notions of normality are completely fake and meta-trendy, since they rely on the changing standards of superstition, religion, Christianity and gender bias to define themselves. Americans, in particular, exhibit very childish reactions to sexual practices that are new to them, much like little kids who are offered a vegetable they haven't seen before: "That's disgusting!" "But darling, you haven't even tried it!" "I don't care, I hate it, I hate it!"
** Susie Bright and Jill Posner, Nothing But the Girl (1996)
* He said it was artificial respiration but now I find I'm to have his child.
** Anthony Burgess, Inside Mr Enderby (1963)
* A man can fuck a whore but, unless his wife is a whore, he cannot fuck his wife….fuck is a…dysphemism….there is no love in it.
** Anthony Burgess, Flame Into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence (1985), quoted in B. R. Myers, "Smaller Than Life", The Atlantic (October 2010)
* There is more difference within the sexes than between them.
** Ivy Compton-Burnett, Mother and Son (1955)

## C

* Like and enjoy; to will and act is one: We only sin when Love’s rites are not done.
** Thomas Carew, "A Rapture", in Poems (1640)
* Do you know why they call it a blowjob? So it'll sound like it has kind of a work ethic attached to it. Make you feel like you did something useful for the economy.
** George Carlin, Doin' It Again (1990)
* Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way. The union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity
** Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (1994–2016)
* Let the husband render to [his] wife her due; but let the wife also do likewise to [her] husband. The wife does not exercise authority over her own body, but her husband does; likewise, also, the husband does not exercise authority over his own body, but his wife does. Do not be depriving each other [of it], except by mutual consent for an appointed time...
** 1 Corinthians 7:3–5a (Watchtower Bible)
* To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature.
** Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor of Children (AD 191), II, 10; as qtd. in "Fathers Know Best Contraception". EWTN. Retrieved 2016-02-14; from the January 1996 issue of "This Rock," published by Catholic Answers; "Contraception/Birth Control". Byzantines.net. Archived from the original on 2008-04-19. Retrieved 2009-03-20.
* The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
** Jean Cocteau, reported in Robert Andrews, The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987), p. 74
* It would take a far more concentrated woman than Amanda to be unfaithful every five minutes.
** Noël Coward, Private Lives (1930)
* If this secret [of sexual magic], which is a scientific secret, were perfectly understood, as it is not by me after more than twelve years' almost constant study and experiment, there would be nothing which the human imagination can conceive that could not be realized in practice.
** Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography, ed. John Symonds (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969), p. 767.
* It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse physical or mental stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be one with it; or fulfill it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy.
** Aleister Crowley, Moon Child (1917), as quoted by Oliver Gaspirtz, Famous Quotes About Sex (2017)

## D

* Nothing is better than sex and anyone who says so has never had a good woman.
** Roger Daltrey, in The Mirror (15 July 2000)
* The act of sex, gratifying though it may be, is God's joke on humanity. It is man's last desperate stand at superintendency. The whole ritual is a grotesque anachronism, an outdated testament to man's waning power. It's all we've got and so we make the best of it. It is not, however, sufficient reason for matrimony.
** Bette Davis, The Lonely Life: An Autobiography (1962), p. 251; quoted in part by Walter Winchell in "Pass the Worm Pills" Cincinnati Enquirer (January 20, 1963) and Liz Smith in "'Postman' Bares a Stamp of Sex," Daily News (1980), and by Davis herself—as simply "Sex is God's joke on human beings."—in This 'n' That (1987), p. 67
* It is very hard for a man to ask questions about sex. The smart ones do.
** Betty Dodson, as quoted by Oliver Gaspirtz, Famous Quotes About Sex (2017)
* She's all states, and all princes, I.
** John Donne, "The Sun Rising", st. 3, in Poems (1633)
* Oh, my America, my Newfoundland, My kingdom, safest when with one man mann’d.
** John Donne, "To His Mistress going to Bed", in The Harmony of the Muses (1654) and Poems (1669)
* Sylvia the fair, in the bloom of Fifteen Felt an innocent warmth, as she lay on the green; She had heard of a pleasure, and something she guest By the towzing and tumbling and touching her Breast: She saw the men eager, but was at a loss, What they meant by their sighing and kissing so close; By their praying and whining, And clasping and twining, And panting and wishing, And sighing and kissing, And sighing and kissing so close.
** John Dryden, "Sylvia the Fair", st. 1, in Sylvæ (1685)
* ’Tis unkind to your Love, and unfaithfully done, To leave me behind you, and die all alone. [...] Then often they died; but the more they did so, The Nymph died more quick, and the Shepherd more slow.
** John Dryden, "Whilst Alexis Lay Prest", sts. 2, 4, in Marriage-à-la-mode (1673)
* Sex and drugs and rock and roll Is all my brain and body need. Sex and drugs and rock and roll Is very good indeed.
** Ian Dury, "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" (26 August 1977)

## E

* "Can a woman not keep her lover without she study to always please him with pleasure? Pew! then let her give up the game. Or shall my lover think with pleasing of me to win me indeed? Faugh! he payeth me then; doth he think I am for hire?"
** Eric Rücker Eddison, Mistress of Mistresses (1935)
* Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye Is underlined for emphasis; Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
** T. S. Eliot, "Whispers of Immortality", in the Little Review (September 1918); collected in Poems (1919)
* No one warns young people to follow Adam's example. He waited till God saw his need. Then God made Adam sleep, prepared for his mate, and brought her to him. We need more of this 'being asleep' in the will of God. Then we can receive what He brings us in His own time, if at all. Instead we are set as bloodhounds after a partner, considering everyone we see until our minds are so concerned with the sex problem that we can talk of nothing else when bull-session time comes around. It is true that a fellow cannot ignore women — but he can think of them as he ought — as sisters, not as sparring partners!
** Jim Elliot, as quoted in Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty (1989), ch. 4

## F

* The sex life of the working class is nasty, brutish and short. Every survey of behaviour, whether it's sexual offences or marital behaviour or premarital behaviour shows that. I had a dear friend who used to say 'tell me how a man makes love and I'll tell you how he votes', and that is absolutely justified in terms of what we know about class attitude and conduct in sexual matters.
** Beatrice Faust, in Olle, Andrew 1992, "Interview with Richard Walsh and Beatrice Faust", Radio 2BL, 14 May; as qtd. in Sexual Offenders and Pornography: A Causal Connection?, by Marlene Goldsmith: Chairman Legislative Council Standing Committee on Social Issues Parliament of New South Wales.
* What happens is that, as with drugs, one needs a stronger shot each time, and women are just women. The consumption of one woman is the consumption of all. You can't double the dose.
** Ian Fleming, quoted in John Pearson, Life of Ian Fleming (1960)
* Always fatuity, vulgarity, as soon as human passion is touched. [...] Just as some poetry is of the eye (form, colour) and some of the ear, so Keats is of the palate. Not only has he constant reference to its pleasures, but the general sensation after reading him is one of tasting. 'What's the harm?' Well, taste for some reason or the other can't carry one far into the world of beauty—that reason being perhaps that though you don't want comradership there you do want the possibility of comradership, and A cannot swallow B's mouthful by any possibility:....and this exclusiveness (to maunder on) also attaches to the physical side of sex though not the least to the spiritual.
** E. M. Forster, Selected Letters: Letter 162, to Malcolm Darling, 1 December 1916
* Sex is like the pursuit of wild mushrooms: Both are fascinating hobbies, both can prove most addictive, and both for the most part yield tasty results. And yet, for the novice, there exists always the chance of making that one fatal mistake.
** Esther Friesner, Harlot’s Ruse (1986), p. 1

## G

* And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
** Genesis 2:23–4 (KJV)
* Life to him was identified with the intimate charm of the feminine form in its greatest variety: and so he spent his days in quest of the red light.
** William Gerhardie, The Polyglots (1925)
* Bobby said he did it when he was 13 Twenty five times take a look at me Do it as often as you possibly can Give it to me four times! Do it a gain (1) and again (2) and again (3) and ag-ga-ain (4) Sex!
** Debbie Gibson, "Sex"
* When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away?The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom—is to die.
** Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 29
* When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned — avoid having sex with the authorities.
** Matt Groening, Life in Hell; as quoted in "Olympic Watch: Let the Games Begin, Finally, Pullease" by Bill Flick, The Pantagraph (June 28, 1996), p. 12
*** Comment: It appears that every subsequent citation of this quote, beginning with the January 26, 1998 issue of ARA News and continuing within a plethora of both in-print and online quote compilations, has slightly reworded the punch line to read: "Do not have sex with the authorities."
* Amœbas at the start Were not complex; They tore themselves apart And started Sex. [...] ’Tis Sex that rules the lives Of clods and kings; It gives us books and wives And other things—Ambition, love, and strife And all the ills And ecstasies of life— And Freuds and Brills.
** Arthur Guiterman, "Sex", sts. 1, 5, 6, in The Light Guitar (1923)

## H

* "Why do they call them love-spells, anyway?" he added bitterly. "It isn't love, you know." "Maybe because some people can't tell the difference. ... Or if they suspect there's a difference, they don't want to know."
** Barbara Hambly, The Rainbow Abyss (1991), ISBN 0-345-37101-1, p. 156
* Sex is a sure cure of boredom and an antidote to violence that is so American. Power to the People!
** Harry Hay, Statement of Purpose: Gay Liberation Front (December 1969)
* The major civilizing force in the world is not religion, it is sex.
** Hugh Hefner, as quoted by Oliver Gaspirtz, Famous Quotes About Sex (2017)
* I don't see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn't anything complex, it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.
** Robert Heinlein, as quoted by Oliver Gaspirtz, Famous Quotes About Sex (2017)
* For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the earth to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time always to unknowing nowhere, this time and again for always to nowhere, now not to be borne once again always and to nowhere, now beyond all bearing up, up, up and into nowhere, suddenly, scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them.
** Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), ch. 13
* Adam had learned the jolly deed of kind: He took her in his arms and there and then Like the clean beasts, embracing from behind, Began in joy to found the breed of men.
** A. D. Hope, "Imperial Adam", ll. 25–28, in Poems (1960)
* Mr. Mercaptan went on to preach a brilliant sermon on that melancholy sexual perversion known as continence.
** Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay (1923)
* A woman makes a guy come, it's standard. A guy makes a woman come, it's talent.
** Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) in Clerks (1994)
* I think that sex is necessary and bankers are not.
** Lancelot Hogben, in Twentieth Century Authors, A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature, Edited by Stanley J. Kunitz, and Howard Haycraft. New York, The H.W. Wilson Company, 1950, (pp. 658-59)
* It is only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber's craving for position and social distinction.
** Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means (1937)

## J

* The great thing about sex is that everybody has an opinion about it and you can't say "Oh you're not an expert."
** Allen Jones, Timeout
* ’Tis no sin love’s fruit to steal; But the sweet thefts to reveal, To be taken, to be seen, These have crimes accounted been.
** Ben Jonson, Volpone; or, The Fox, act 3, sc. 6

## K

* Pop culture and porn would have us believe women's desire can be ignited by a single sultry gaze, and their genitals are ready to go at a moment's notice — much like those of men. This is not accurate information and can lead to painful or unsatisfying sex.
** Tanya Koens, “How women can explore and enhance masturbation”, ABC Life, (Posted 28 August 2019, updated 23 February 2020)
* Remember a regular and pleasurable sex life either with yourself or a partner is linked to a youthful appearance, reduced chance of coronary incidents, fewer menopause symptoms and increased energy.
** Tanya Koens, “How women can explore and enhance masturbation”, ABC Life, (Posted 28 August 2019, updated 23 February 2020)
* Not even when I was who I was, before, not even then had I ever known a woman so skilled in those arts of the body that are really the arts of the mind.
** Nancy Kress, Stalking Beans, in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (eds.) Snow White, Blood Red (1993), p. 96

## L

* Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got.
** Sophia Loren, as quoted by Oliver Gaspirtz, Famous Quotes About Sex (2017)
* A promiscuous person is someone who is getting more sex than you are.
** Victor Lownes, as quoted by Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon (1984), p. 224
* How alike are the groans of love to those of the dying.
** Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano (1947)

## M

* Let us roll all our Strength, and all Our sweetness, up into one Ball: And tear our Pleasures with rough strife, Thorough the Iron gates of Life. Thus, though we cannot make our Sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
** Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress", in Miscellaneous Poems (1681)
* [T]hough the fact seems little known, the clitoris of one woman may be stimulated nearly as effectively by the vulva of another woman, as can the penis of a male with the vagina of the female. The female emotion resulting from stimulation of the clitoris by another woman (as apparent in the behavior of women prisoners) seems fully as extensive as the male emotion resulting from stimulation of the penis. In this type of physical relationship, both women most frequently experience simultaneous stimulation of the clitoris with appropriate emotional states following. Neither woman, of course, receives stimulation of the mouth of the vagina.
* Girls five or six years, or older, are quite likely to experience passive love for other girls of similar age, with or without mutual stimulation of the genital organs, as the case may be....At least two completed love affairs of this type between girls five to seven years old have been brought to my attention. In both cases the children were wholly normal so far as could be determined by medical and psychological examination.
** William Moulton Marston, The Emotions of Normal People, pp. 303, 318, as quoted in Noah Berlatsky, Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941–1948, pp. 146–7
* Sex is natural, sex is good Not everybody does it, but everybody should.
** George Michael, "I Want Your Sex" (1987)
* Continental people have sex-life; the English have hot-water bottles.
** George Mikes, How to be an Alien (1946)
* Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight aren't important.
** Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957)
* All of us have got some kinds of feelings and thoughts about sex, but the only genre connected to it is this grubby, shameful one. That's a real pity. Sex is glorious, it's how we all got here, and it's most people's favourite activity.
** Alan Moore as quoted by Jeremy Duns in "Alan Moore: The reluctant hero", Independent, (15 March 2004).
* Most of the people who get sent to die in wars are young men who've got a lot of energy and would probably rather, in a better world, be putting that energy into copulation rather than going over there and blowing some other young man's guts out.
** Alan Moore, "The Craft", interview with Daniel Whiston, Engine Comics (January 2005).

## N

* Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
* I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her—after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred—I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness (her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever—for all the world a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation)—and the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair, and caress her at random and mutely ask her blessing, and at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again—and "oh, no," Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure—all would be shattered.
** Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1954)

## P

* Sex is a part of love. You shouldn't go around doing it unless you are in love.
** Betty Paige, as quoted by Oliver Gaspirtz, Famous Quotes About Sex (2017)
* Foeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas Et taedet Veneris statim peractae.
** Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short; And done, we straight repent us of the sport.
** Petronius, in Emil Baehrens, Poetae Latini Minores (1882), vol. 4, no. 101; translated by Ben Jonson in Underwoods (F2, 1640)
* On a sofa upholstered in panther skin Mona did researches in original sin.
** William Plomer, "Mews Flat Mona: A Memory of the Twenties", in Collected Poems (1960), p. 116
* Sex is an antidote to death, or at least, an adequate placebo.
** Tim Pratt, Cup and Table (originally published in 2006 in David Moles & Susan Marie Groppi (eds.) Twenty Epics) and reprinted in Mike Ashley (ed.), The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy (2008), p. 385
* There be three things which are too wonderful for me, Yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; The way of a serpent upon a rock; The way of a ship in the midst of the sea; And the way of a man with a maid.
** Proverbs 30:18–19 (KJV)
* Some fuckin' is good for you, Jack. Gettin' some pussy beats havin' a war.
** Richard Pryor, "Have Your Ass Home By 11:00", That Nigger's Crazy (1974)

## R

* These two did oftentimes do the two-backed beast together, joyfully rubbing and frotting their bacon 'gainst one another.
** François Rabelais, Gargantua (1534), translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart (1653), ch. 3. Cp. Othello, act 1, sc. 1, ll. 126–7
* Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.
** Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique.
* What we refuse to believe is that it was intended by nature as a manufacturing process. In order to make certain the race would continue, nature made it the most exciting and alluring of experiences; thus, we have turned it into a diversion and an entertainment. Nonetheless, it is a manufacturing process.
** Edward G. Robinson, All My Yesterdays: An Autobiography (1973), p. 276
* Had she picked out, to rub her arse on, Some stiff-pricked clown or well-hung parson, ... Such natural freedoms are but just: There’s something generous in mere lust. But to turn a damned abandoned jade When neither head nor tail persuade; To be a whore in understanding, A passive pot for fools to spend in!
** The Earl of Rochester, "A Ramble in Saint James's Park"; Poems (1680)
* Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.
** Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929),

## S

* Venereal: From Venus, the goddess of love, this word refers to the reality of desire. With the rise of Protestantism and science, the word "disease" was tacked on in a revealing combination of categorization and moralizing. "Which disease?" "The disease of love."
** John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion
* He on her belly falls, she on her back. Now is she in the very lists of love, Her champion mounted for the hot encounter.
** William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593)
* Your brother and his lover have embraced; As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time That from the seedness the bare fallow brings To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.
** William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act 1, sc. 4
* Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed, Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty,—
** William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, sc. 4 (The Closet Scene)
* By Gis and by Saint Charity, Alack, and fie for shame! Young men will do't, if they come to't; By cock, they are to blame. Quoth she, before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed. He answers: So would I ha' done, by yonder sun, An thou hadst not come to my bed.
** William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 4, sc. 5 (Ophelia's Mad Song)
* Hymen hath brought the bride to bed, Where, by the loss of maidenhead, A babe is moulded.
** William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, act 3, chorus
* Imagine what would happen if instead of centering our beliefs about heterosexual sex around the idea that the man "penetrates" the woman, we were to say that the woman's vagina "consumes" the man's penis. This would create a very different set of connotations, as the woman would become the active initiator and the man would be the passive and receptive party. One can easily see how this could lead to men and masculinity being seen as dependent on, and existing for the benefit of, femaleness and femininity.
** Julia Serrano Whipping Girl: A Transexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Feminimity. p. 330 as quoted in Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter comics, 1941-1948 p. 164 by Noah Berlatsky.
* The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, the expense damnable.
** Attributed to Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
* What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.
** John Steinbeck, as quoted by Oliver Gaspirtz, Famous Quotes About Sex (2017)
* For all that she’d had no great expectations for it, sex was turning out to be even more squalid, tawdry, and cynical than she had suspected it would.
** Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), ch. 10

## T

* George Malcolm Thomson, The Robbers Passing By (1966), p. 145; elsewhere attributed to Mae West
* I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.
** Henry David Thoreau, journal entry (April 12, 1852); in Odell Shepard, ed., The Heart of Thoreau's Journals (1927), p. 126.
* Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.
** Hunter S. Thompson, as quoted by Oliver Gaspirtz, Famous Quotes About Sex (2017)
* The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
** Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canadian minister of justice, remark to newsmen, Ottawa, Canada (December 21, 1967), as reported in The Globe and Mail, Toronto (December 22, 1967), p. 1. He was commenting on the government's proposal to overhaul Canadian criminal law, giving new recognition to individual rights in several areas, including sexual behavior.

## W

* All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.
** Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies (1930)
* I consider sex a misdemeanor; the more I miss, de meaner I get.
** Mae West, as quoted by Oliver Gaspirtz, Famous Quotes About Sex (2017)
* A woman for duty, A boy for pleasure, But a melon for ecstasy.
** John Wells, who attributed it to an Arabic or Turkish proverb
* There are two kinds of sex, classical and baroque. Classical sex is romantic, profound, serious, emotional, moral, mysterious, spontaneous, abandoned, focused on a particular person, and stereotypically feminine. Baroque sex is pop, playful, funny, experimental, conscious, deliberate, amoral, anonymous, focused on sensation for sensation's sake, and stereotypically masculine. The classical mentality taken to an extreme is sentimental and finally puritanical; the baroque mentality taken to an extreme is pornographic and finally obscene. Ideally, a sexual relation ought to create a satisfying tension between the two modes (a baroque idea, particularly if the tension is ironic) or else blend them so well that the distinction disappears (a classical aspiration).
** Ellen Willis, "Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life" (1979), Beginning To See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981)
* Once you've had a lover-robot, you'll never want a real man again.
** Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001 film), written by Ian Watson and Brian Aldiss.
* The problem is that sex is the most dangerous way of trying to achieve personal growth, because the life force has mixed it so liberally with a string sense of "magic", which, in the attempt at possession turns out to be an illusion. The attempt to possess a woman through an act of sex is as frustrating as trying to possess the scent of a rose by cooking and eating it.
** Colin Wilson in The Corpse Garden, p. 250 (1998)
* You never fuck the same woman twice.
** John Wise (after Heraclitus), in John H. Richardson, "How Does a Polyamorous Marriage Go the Distance?", Elle (14 September 2016)

## Z

* Love is what makes sex more than masturbation. If there is no love even if you are really with a partner you masturbate with a partner.
** Slavoj Žižek, Interview in HARDtalk, BBC World Service (12 January 2010)

## Dialogue

    Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? [Lying down at Ophelia’s feet.]
    Ophelia: No, my lord.
    Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap?
    Ophelia: Ay, my lord.
    Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?
    Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.
    Hamlet: That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
    Ophelia: What is, my lord?
    Hamlet: Nothing.
    — William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
    Lucia DeLury: Honey, I don't understand sex. I don't get it, get it? It's just, it seems like, uh… a lot of trouble for not much. Am I the only one that thinks this?
    Bill Truit: I don't think you're the tip of an iceberg, frankly.
    Lucia DeLury: Well, I- I would rather have a bathrobe. You know, it lasts longer, and there's no fluids. You know, what's so great about that? That's like, "Hi! I'd like to blow my nose on your face."
    — The Opposite of Sex (1998), with Lisa Kudrow (Lucia) and Martin Donovan (Bill)
    [Alvy confronts Annie about having an affair]
    Alvy Singer: Well, I didn't start out spying. I thought I'd surprise you. Pick you up after school.
    Annie Hall: Yeah, but you wanted to keep the relationship flexible. Remember, it's your phrase.
    Alvy Singer: Oh stop it, you're having an affair with your college professor, that jerk that teaches that incredible crap course, Contemporary Crisis in Western Man...
    Annie Hall: Existential Motifs in Russian Literature. You're really close.
    Alvy Singer: What's the difference? It's all mental masturbation.
    Annie Hall: Oh, well, now we're finally getting to a subject you know something about.
    Alvy Singer: Hey, don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.
    — Annie Hall (1977), with Woody Allen (Alvy Singer) and Diane Keaton (Annie Hall)

## See also

* Chastity
* Promiscuity

## References

* Marianne Hunter (ed.), Sex: A Book of Quotations, Barnes & Noble Books, 2003. ISBN 0-7607-4072-0.
* Baltimore Chronicle: Quotes about Sex

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Human sexual activity on Wikipedia
* The dictionary definition of sex on Wiktionary
* Media related to Human sexual activity on Wikimedia Commons