Mark Twain Quotes

The human being places sexual intercourse above all other joys, but leaves it out of his heaven.

Some things are better than sex, and some are worse, but there's nothing exactly like it.

I am inspired by human sexuality. The act itself is mechanical and holds little interest to me.

You can't remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the details, but the sex of the sex cannot be remembered, the substantive truth of it, it is by nature self-erasing, you can remember its anatomy and be left with a judgment as to the degree of your liking of it, but whatever it is as a splurge of being, as a loss, as a charge of the conviction of love stopping your heart like your execution, there is no memory of it in the brain, only the deduction that it happened and that time passed, leaving you with a silhouette that you want to fill in again.

Fairyland is the loveliest word because it means everything the human heart desires.

Her own body was such a familiar and unremarkable thing to her that she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from it, by the intense and amusing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out urgently and press it, squeeze it, pinch it, rub it. She did not understand Yossarian's lust; but she was willing to take is word for it.

At the heart of mankind's existence is the desire to be intimate and to be loved by another. Marriage is designed to meet that need for intimacy and love.

The artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss.

We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.

No one is contented in this world, I believe. There is always something left to desire, and the last thing longed for always seems the most necessary to happiness.

But in the morning Lust is always furtive. It dresses as mechanically as it undressed and heads straight for the door, to return to its own solitude. Like all the sins, it also makes us solitary. It is self-abdication at the very core of one's own being, a surrender of our need and ability to give and receive. Lust does not come with open hands, certainly not with an open heart. It comes only with open legs.

Heaven... I'm in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak.

O Youth! flame earnest, still aspire, With energies immortal! To many a heaven of Desire, Our yearning opes a portal! And tho' Age wearies by the way, And hearts break in the furrow, We'll sow the golden grain Today-- The Harvest comes tomorrow.

Oh yes, I know the way to heaven was easy. We found the little kingdom of our passion that all can share who walk the road of lovers. In wild and secret happiness we stumbled; and gods and demons clamoured in our senses.

He wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you'd been born for only one moment and this, for whatever reason, was it.

...the word that seems best to summarize the desire of the human heart is 'communion.' ...wherever we look it is communion that we seek.

But the meaning of life is not . . . explained by one's business life, nor is the deep desire of the human heart answered by a bank account.

Angel, getting you off is ninety-nine percent of the fun for me.

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else.

It is thyself, mine own self's better part; Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart; My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim, My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips.

Wild Nights – Wild Nights! Were I with thee Wild Nights should be Our luxury! Futile – the winds – To a heart in port – Done with the compass – Done with the chart! Rowing in Eden – Ah, the sea! Might I moor – Tonight – In thee!

No move towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand years that the world has existed.

You can ravish your woman so deeply that her surrender breaks your heart into light.