Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Sensuality not only debases both body and mind, but dulls the keen edge of pleasure.

My people have learned that it is a condescension far beneath them, and that it opens a wide door, when indulged in, for the admission of every unclean thing.

A man that lives on pork, fine-flour bread, rich pies and cakes, and condiments, drinks tea and coffee, and uses tobacco, might as well try to fly as to be chaste in thought.

Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.

I want to hear raucous music, to see faces, to brush against bodies, to drink fiery Benedictine. Beautiful women and handsome men arouse fierce desires in me. I want to dance. I want drugs. I want to know perverse people, to be intimate with them. I never look at naive faces. I want to bite into life, and to be torn by it.

Intemperance is the plaque of sensuality, and temperance is not its bane but its seasoning.

Moral training in Ireland is severe and lasts until marriage. Even in childhood, we are taught by the pious clergy to battle against bad thoughts so that we may preserve our holy purity.

My greatest weakness is... food. If it looks like it's going to taste nice, it goes in my face - simple as that.

If there's something I like, I'm going to eat a little more of it than most people.

Hunger is good discipline.

I have always espoused chastity except when one can no longer resist the temptation.

If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.

The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you.

Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea made one shudder. All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura were licking their fingers with that absorbed inward look that only comes from whipped cream.

Frequent not the company of immodest persons, especially if they be also impudent, as is generally the case; ...these corrupted souls and infected hearts scarcely speak to any, either of the same or a different sex, without causing them to fall in some degree from purity; they have poison in their eyes and in their breath, like basilisks. On the contrary, keep company with the chaste and virtuous; often meditate upon and read holy things; for the word of God is chaste, and makes those also chaste that delight in it.

Hemingway is great in that alone of living writers he has saturated his work with the memory of physical pleasure, with sunshine and salt water, with food, wine and making love and the remorse which is the shadow of that sun.

Pure by impure is not seen.

There are two areas where you can't stop people misbehaving: eating and sex

Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen.

An unrestricted satisfaction of every need presents itself as the most enticing method of conducting one's life, but it means putting enjoyment before caution, and soon brings its own punishment.

Purity is the power to contemplate defilement.

In the kitchens of love, after all, vice is like the pepper in a good sauce; it brings out the flavor, it’s indispensable.

Purity does not mean crushing the instincts but having the instincts as servants and not the master of the spirit.

When engaged in eating, the brain should be the servant of the stomach.

The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness, And in the taste confounds the appetite: Therefore love moderately— long love doth so.