Love

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Remember that I have forbidden you to utter that word, that hateful word,' said Anna, with a shudder. But at once she felt that by that very word 'forbidden' she had shown that she acknowledged certain rights over him, and by that very fact was encouraging him to speak of love. 'I have long meant to tell you this,' she went on, looking resolutely into his eyes, and hot all over from the burning flush on her cheeks. 'I've come on purpose this evening, knowing I should meet you. I have come to tell you that this must end. I have never blushed before anyone, and you force me to feel to blame for something.' He looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual beauty in her face. 'What do you wish of me?' he said simply and seriously 'I want you to go to Moscow and ask for Kitty's forgiveness,' she said. 'You don't wish that?' he said. He saw she was saying what she forced herself to say, not what she wanted to say. 'If you love me, as you say,' she whispered, 'do so that I may be at peace.' His face grew radiant. 'Don't you know that you're all my life to me? But I know no peace, and I can't give it you; all myself—and love . . . yes. I can't think of you and myself apart. You and I are one to me. And I see no chance before us of peace for me or for you. I see a chance of despair, of wretchedness . . . or I see a chance of bliss, what bliss! . . . Can it be there's no chance of it?' he murmured with his lips; but she heard. She strained every effort of her mind to say what ought to be said. But instead of that she let her eyes rest on him, full of love, and made no answer. 'It's come!' he thought in ecstasy. 'When I was beginning to despair, and it seemed there would be no end—it's come! She loves me! She owns it!' 'Then do this for me: never say such things to me, and let us be friends,' she said in words; but her eyes spoke quite differently. 'Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people—that's in your hands.' She would have said something, but he interrupted her. 'I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.' 'I don't want to drive you away.' 'Only don't change anything, leave everything as it is,' he said in a shaky voice. 'Here's your husband.' At that instant Alexey Alexandrovitch did in fact walk into the room with his calm, awkward gait.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Our interest in things means the attention and emotion which the thought of them will excite, and the actions which their presence will evoke. Thus every species is particularly interested in its own prey or food, its own enemies, its own sexual mates, and its own young. These things fascinate by their intrinsic power to do so; they are cared for for their own sakes. Well, it stands not in the least otherwise with our bodies. They too are percepts in our objective field—they are simply the most interesting percepts there. What happens to them excites in us emotions and tendencies to action more energetic and habitual than any which are excited by other portions of the 'field.' What my comrades call my bodily selfishness or self-love, is nothing but the sum of all the outer acts which this interest in my body spontaneously draws from me. My 'selfishness' is here but a descriptive name for grouping together the outward symptoms which I show. When I am led by self-love to keep my seat whilst ladies stand, or to grab something first and cut out my neighbor, what I really love is the comfortable seat, is the thing itself which I grab. I love them primarily, as the mother loves her babe, or a generous man an heroic deed. Wherever, as here, self-seeking is the outcome of simple instinctive propensity, it is but a name for certain reflex acts. Something rivets my attention fatally, and fatally provokes the 'selfish' response. Could an automaton be so skilfully constructed as to ape these acts, it would be called selfish as properly as I. It is true that I am no automaton, but a thinker. But my thoughts, like my acts, are here concerned only with the outward things. They need neither know nor care for any pure principle within. In fact the more utterly 'selfish' I am in this primitive way, the more blindly absorbed my thought will be in the objects and impulses of my lusts, and the more devoid of any inward looking glance. A baby, whose consciousness of the pure Ego, of himself as a thinker, is not usually supposed developed, is, in this way, as some German has said, 'der vollendeteste Egoist .' His corporeal person, and what ministers to its needs, are the only self he can possibly be said to love. His so-called self-love is but a name for his insensibility to all but this one set of things.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "The feeling," he says, "of the words makes ten or twenty times more noise in our consciousness than the sense of the phrase, which for consciousness is a very slight matter."[252] And having distinguished these two things, he goes on to separate them in time, saying that the idea may either precede or follow the words, but that it is a 'pure illusion' to suppose them simultaneous.[253] Now I believe that in all cases where the words are understood , the total idea may be and usually is present not only before and after the phrase has been spoken, but also whilst each separate word is uttered.[254] It is the overtone, halo, or fringe of the word as spoken in that sentence . It is never absent; no word in an understood sentence comes to consciousness as a mere noise. We feel its meaning as it passes; and although our object differs from one moment to another as to its verbal kernel or nucleus, yet it is similar throughout the entire segment of the stream. The same object is known everywhere, now from the point of view, if we may so call it, of this word, now from the point of view of that. And in our feeling of each word there chimes an echo or foretaste of every other. The consciousness of the 'Idea' and that of the words are thus consubstantial. They are made of the same 'mind-stuff,' and form an unbroken stream. Annihilate a mind at any instant, cut its thought through whilst yet uncompleted, and examine the object present to the cross-section thus suddenly made; you will find, not the bald word in process of utterance, but that word suffused with the whole idea. The word may be so loud, as M. Egger would say, that we cannot tell just how its suffusion, as such, feels, or how it differs from the suffusion of the next word. But it does differ; and we may be sure that, could we see into the brain, we should find the same processes active through the entire sentence in different degrees, each one in turn becoming maximally excited and then yielding the momentary verbal 'kernel,' to the thought's content, at other times being only sub-excited, and then combining with the other sub-excited processes to give the overtone or fringe.[255] We may illustrate this by a farther development of the diagram on p. 186.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Is it the inner nucleus of my spiritual self, that collection of obscurely felt 'adjustments,' plus perhaps that still more obscurely perceived subjectivity as such, of which we recently spoke? Or is it perhaps the concrete stream of my thought in its entirety, or some one section of the same? Or may it be the indivisible Soul-Substance, in which, according to the orthodox tradition, my faculties inhere? Or, finally, can it be the mere pronoun I? Surely it is none of these things, that self for which I feel such hot regard. Though all of them together were put within me, I should still be cold, and fail to exhibit anything worthy of the name of selfishness or of devotion to 'Number One.' To have a self that I can care for , nature must first present me with some object interesting enough to make me instinctively wish to appropriate it for its own sake, and out of it to manufacture one of those material, social, or spiritual selves, which we have already passed in review. We shall find that all the facts of rivalry and substitution that have so struck us, all the shiftings and expansions and contractions of the sphere of what shall be considered me and mine, are but results of the fact that certain things appeal to primitive and instinctive impulses of our nature, and that we follow their destinies with an excitement that owes nothing to a reflective source. These objects our consciousness treats as the primordial constituents of its Me. Whatever other objects, whether by association with the fate of these, or in any other way, come to be followed with the same sort of interest, form our remoter and more secondary self. The words me , then, and self , so far as they arouse feeling and connote emotional worth, are objective designations, meaning all the things which have the power to produce in a stream of consciousness excitement of a certain peculiar sort . Let us try to justify this proposition in detail. The most palpable selfishness of a man is his bodily selfishness; and his most palpable self is the body to which that selfishness relates. Now I say that he identifies himself with this body because he loves it , and that he does not love it because he finds it to be identified with himself. Reverting to natural history-psychology will help us to see the truth of this. In the chapter on Instincts we shall learn that every creature has a certain selective interest in certain portions of the world, and that this interest is as often connate as acquired.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  [377] P. A. Chadbourne: Instinct, p. 28 (New York, 1872).[378] "It would be very simple-minded to suppose that bees follow their queen, and protect her and care for her, because they are aware that with-out her the hive would become extinct. The odor or the aspect of their queen is manifestly agreeable to the bees—that is why they love her so. Does not all true love base itself on agreeable perceptions much more than on representations of utility?" (G. H. Schneider, Der Thierische Wille, p. 187.) A priori, there is no reason to suppose that any sensation might not in some animal cause any emotion and any impulse. To us it seems unnatural that an odor should directly excite anger or fear; or a color, lust. Yet there are creatures to which some smells are quite as frightful as any sounds, and very likely others to which color is as much a sexual irritant as form.[379] Classics editor's note: James insertion.[380] Der Thierische Wille, pp. 282-3.[381] In the instincts of mammals, and even of lower creatures, the uniformity and infallibility which, a generation ago, were considered as essential characters do not exist. The minuter study of recent years has found continuity, transition, variation, and mistake, wherever it has looked for them, and decided that what is called an instinct is usually only a tendency to act in a way of which the average is pretty constant, but which need not be mathematically 'true.' Ct. on this point Darwin's Origin of Species: Romanes's Mental Evol., chaps. xi to xvi incl., and Appendix; W. L. Lindsay's Mind in Lower Animals, vol. I. 133-141; ii. chaps, v, xx; and K. Semper's Conditions of Existence in Animals, where a great many instances will be found.[382] Spalding, Macmillan's Magazine, Feb. 1873, p. 287.[383] Ibid . p. 289[384] For the cases in full see Mental Evolution in Animals. pp. 213-217.[385] Transactions of American Neurological Association, vol. I. p. 129(1875).[386] "Mr. Spalding," says Mr. Lewes (Problems of Life and Mind, prob. chap. ii. ' 22, note), "tells me of a friend of his who reared a gosling in the kitchen, away from all water; when this bird was some months old, and was taken to a pond, it not only refused to go into the water, but when thrown in scrambled out again, as a hen would have done. Here was an instinct entirely suppressed." See a similar observation on ducklings in T. R. H. Stebbing: Essays on Darwinism (London, 1871), p. 73.[387] "Senses and Intellect. 3rd ed. pp. 413-675.[388] Nature, xii. 507 (1875).[389] See, for some excellent pedagogic remarks about doing yourself when you want to get your pupils to do, and not simply telling them to do it, Baumann, Handbuch der Moral (1879), p. 32 ff.[390] Sympathy has been enormously written about In books on Ethics. a very good recent chapter is that by Thos. Fowler. The Principles of Morals, part ii. chap.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  And so, probably, does each animal feel about the particular things it tends to do in presence of particular objects. They, too, are a priori syntheses. To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved; to the bear, the she-bear. To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her.[378] Thus we may be sure that, however mysterious some animals' instincts may appear to us, our instincts will appear no less mysterious to them. And we may conclude that, to the animal which obeys it, every impulse and every step of every instinct shines with its own sufficient light, end seems at the moment the only eternally right and proper thing to do. It is done for its own sake exclusively. What voluptuous thrill may not shake a fly, when she at last discovers the one particular leaf, or carrion, or bit of dung, that out of all the world can stimulate her ovipositor to its discharge? Does not the discharge then seem to her the only fitting thing? And need she care or know anything about the future maggot and its food? Since the egg-laying instincts are simple examples to consider, a few quotations about them from Schneider may be serviceable:

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "As soon as a wife becomes a mother her whole thought and feeling, her whole being, is altered. Until then she had only thought of her own well-being, of the satisfaction of her vanity; the whole world appeared made only for her; everything that went on about her was only noticed so far as it had personal reference to herself ; she asked of every one that he should appear interested in her, pay her the requisite attention, and as far as possible fulfil her wishes. Now, however, the centre of the world is no longer herself, but her child. She does not think of her own hunger, she must first be sure that the child is fed. It is nothing to her that she herself is tired and needs rest, so long as she sees that the child's sleep is disturbed; the moment it stirs she awakes, though far stronger noises fail to arouse her now. She, who formerly could not bear the slightest carelessness of dress, and touched everything with gloves, allows herself to be soiled by the infant, and does not shrink from seizing its clouts with her naked hands. Now, she has the greatest patience with the ugly, piping cry-baby (Schreihals), whereas until now every discordant sound, every slightly unpleasant noise, made her nervous. Every limb of the still hideous little being appears to her beautiful, every movement fills her with delight. She has, in one word, transferred her entire egoism to the child, and lives only in it. Thus, at least, it is in all unspoiled, naturally-bred mothers, who, alas! seem to be growing rarer; and thus it is with ah the higher animal-mothers. The maternal joys of a cat, for example, are not to be disguised. With an expression of infinite comfort she stretches out her forelegs to offer her teats to her children, and moves her tail with delight when the little hungry mouths tug and suck. . . But not only the contact, the bare look of the offspring affords endless delight, not only because the mother thinks that the child will someday grow great and handsome and bring her many joys, but because she has received from Nature an instinctive love for her children. She does not herself know why she is so happy, and why the look of the child and the care of it are so agreeable, any more than the young man can give an account of why he loves a maiden, and is so happy when she is near. Few mothers, in caring for their child, think of the proper purpose of maternal love for the preservation of the species. Such a thought may arise in the father's mind ; seldom in that of the mother. The latter feels only A .. that it is an everlasting delight to hold the being which she has brought forth protectingly in her arms, to dress it, to wash it, to rock it to sleep, or to still its hunger."

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I forget that I am a captive, and that bones have been broken, and that we’ve almost died. I forget that he has a life with someone else. I forget that I was raped and that I have no breasts. I forget that I fight so hard not to feel anything. Isaac is making love to me, and all I feel right at this moment is valued. He carries me up to his bed, and lays me down on the mattress. I can feel him trickling down my thigh as he climbs into bed and stretches out beside me. Hold me, I think. Only words in my head, but Isaac turns his body and folds himself around me. I crush my eyes together. Pitter patter, pitter patter… Fear, light footed, dances around me. She whispers seductively in my ear. We are lovers, fear and I. She calls to me, and I let her in. Go. I tell her. Let me go, let me go, let me go, let me go. “Tell me a lie, Isaac.” His fingertips trace a curlicue on my shoulder. “I don’t love you.” He cannot see my face, but it writhes: eyelashes, lips, the cutting of lines across my forehead. “Tell me a truth, Senna.” “I don’t know how,” I breath. “Then tell me a lie.” “I don’t love you,” I say. I sink beneath the weight of it all. Isaac stirs behind me, and then he is leaning over me, his elbows on either side of my head. “The truth is for the mind,” he says. “Lies are for the heart. So let’s just keep lying.” I kiss the man I lie to. He kisses me with truth. I am set free. We work to set the books in order. Through the longest night, the night that never ends. It’s good to have something to do, to keep you from waltzing down crazy street—not that we haven’t already been there. It’s a street you only want to visit a couple times in your life. We have power again … heat. So we take advantage by not sleeping, our fingers flying over pages, our brows creased with the strain. Isaac has Nick’s book. I take on the task of the other two—mine and…? It seems that there are too many pages to make up only three books. I wonder if we will discover a fourth. Even as I come across pages of Knotted and hand them to Isaac, it is the nameless book that catches my attention. Each page has a line that pulls at my eyes. I read them, re-read them. No one I know writes this way, yet it is so familiar. I feel a lust for this author’s words.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  It turned hot, and in place of the dampness and the cold, came days and nights that seemed almost breathless; days when the wounded must lie out in the sun, tormented by flies as they waited their turn to be lifted into the ambulances. And as though misfortunes attracted each other, as though indeed they were hunting in couples, Stephen’s face was struck by a splinter of shell, and her right cheek cut open rather badly. It was neatly stitched up by the little French doctor at the Poste de Secours, and when he had finished with his needle and dressings, he bowed very gravely: ‘Mademoiselle will carry an honourable scar as a mark of her courage,’ and he bowed yet again, so that in the end Stephen must also bow gravely. Fortunately, however, she could still do her job, which was all to the good for the short-handed Unit. 5 On an autumn afternoon of blue sky and sunshine, Stephen had the Croix de Guerre pinned on her breast by a white-haired and white-moustached general. First came the motherly Mrs. Claude Breakspeare, whose tunic looked much too tight for her bosom, then Stephen and one or two other members of that valiant and untiring Unit. The general kissed each one in turn on both cheeks, while overhead hovered a fleet of Aces; troops presented arms, veteran troops tried in battle, and having the set look of war in their eyes—for the French have a very nice taste in such matters. And presently Stephen’s bronze Croix de Guerre would carry three miniature stars on its ribbon, and each star would stand for a mention in despatches. That evening she and Mary walked over the fields to a little town not very far from their billets. They paused for a moment to watch the sunset, and Mary stroked the new Croix de Guerre; then she looked straight up into Stephen’s eyes, her mouth shook, and Stephen saw that she was crying. After this they must walk hand in hand for a while. Why not? There was no one just then to see them. Mary said: ‘All my life I’ve been waiting for something.’ ‘What was it, my dear?’ Stephen asked her gently. And Mary answered: ‘I’ve been waiting for you, and it’s seemed such a dreadful long time, Stephen.’ The barely healed wound across Stephen’s cheek flushed darkly, for what could she find to answer? ‘For me?’ she stammered. Mary nodded gravely: ‘Yes, for you. I’ve always been waiting for you; and after the war you’ll send me away.’

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  “You want to see other people?” I closed my eyes, bracing for it. I could do this. I could share her. I just didn’t want to lose her completely. Maybe that made me weak, but I was falling for her. “Do you?” I peeked at her from beneath the fringe of my eyelashes, trying to gauge what her idle-sounding question really meant. If I said no, would she be afraid to be honest? But I didn’t want to see anyone else. Kari with her spritelike body and small kitten face was the only one I wanted to hover over while I fucked her. I gave her a cowardly shrug. My throat was too tight to push words out. She blew out an exasperated breath. “Dammit, Margot. You aren’t easy, are you?” “How can you say that? Didn’t you have my pants off an hour after we met?” “Don’t be smug. I’m serious. Things have to change.” I sat up and raked a hand through my hair, feeling frustrated and grumpy. “Can we table this until after I make you come?” Maybe if I proved to her that she wasn’t going to get any better than me, she’d be satisfied. Or maybe she’d just forget about this conversation. I could keep her busy all weekend with my mouth and fingers, keep her turned inside out and fuck-fogged. Then maybe we could put off talking until she loved me as much as I loved her. Her mouth twisted and her eyes filled. I bent quickly and kissed her, cupping her head and taking her mouth gently. “Don’t you cry,” I said harshly when I pulled back. Her mouth crimped tighter. I shoved her to her back and crawled on top, trapping her legs between mine, wrapping my hands around her wrists and pinning her to the floor. “This is good. What we have could be fucking great.” She made a noise, but I didn’t want to hear a protest, and I covered her mouth again, eating her lips the way I wanted to eat her pussy. “Just shut up. Talk later. Told you, I wanna taste.” When I came up for air, she whispered, “Sometimes, you’re such a bitch.” “Who’s talking dirty now?” I scooted downward, hovering over one breast. Her nipples were softer than mine, velvety, puffy little cones—pale peach and just a shade or two darker than the soft skin surrounding them. “You’ve got the prettiest tits I’ve ever seen.” “If you like them B-B sized,” she groused. “I do. Aren’t you lucky?” She snorted, but she settled deeper against the carpet. I had her now. I ignored the dildo and buried my face between her legs, sucking on her outer lips, sinking my tongue between them to catch the tangy fluid seeping from inside her. I thrust two fingers into her pussy and thumbed her clit, rasping my thumb over the hard, rounded knot.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  I scooted downward, hovering over one breast. Her nipples were softer than mine, velvety, puffy little cones—pale peach and just a shade or two darker than the soft skin surrounding them. “You’ve got the prettiest tits I’ve ever seen.” “If you like them B-B sized,” she groused. “I do. Aren’t you lucky?” She snorted, but she settled deeper against the carpet. I had her now. I ignored the dildo and buried my face between her legs, sucking on her outer lips, sinking my tongue between them to catch the tangy fluid seeping from inside her. I thrust two fingers into her pussy and thumbed her clit, rasping my thumb over the hard, rounded knot. Tremors shook the thighs tightening around me and made her belly jump. Her head thrashed, her eyes squeezed shut. I worked two more fingers inside, cupping them to make them fit, and began the rhythmic push-pull while I bent closer and swirled my tongue over her clit, which had swelled past its hood. She came hard, jerking up her hips. I suctioned harder, pulling with my lips until she let loose a breathless, choked scream and settled again. Her fingers threaded through my hair and tugged, and I moved up her body, covering her. Resting on my elbows, I cupped her face and kissed her. When I broke the kiss, I framed her face with my palms. “I don’t want anyone but you. But if you need more, if you aren’t ready for it to be just about you and me, I’ll wait until you’re sure. I won’t push.” Her eyes glittered and her arms wrapped around me. “I was going to ask you if I could move in with you. My lease is up. I need to make plans.” I held still, trying not to get too excited. “You’re welcome to live with me. You can take my office—” Kari pressed a finger to my lips. “Shut up. I’ll be straight. I don’t know if I’ll never want anyone else again. But I’d like that to be our decision, because I’m with you. We aren’t going to be roommates. I plan to sleep in your bed.” The tightness in my chest that I hadn’t been aware of until that moment eased. I grinned down at her, watched her expression soften, watched her flick her tongue around her mouth and knew she wanted me to kiss her again. It was enough for now. More than I’d hoped for when I arrived. “And to think we still have two more days…” BUSTED Sophie Mouette A fter the movie, Elle and I parked at the edge of the beach. It was too dark to see much except a hint of paler darknes where the surf hit the sand, but we cracked the windows so we could hear the crash of the waves and the murmur of the wind without getting too cold.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘I see quite plainly that my strength is failing, which saddens me greatly because life has never been sweeter to me than of late. There is one thing, however, that reconciles me to my fate, for I shall find myself dying – if die I must – in the arms of the two people I love best in the whole world: yours, my dear dear friend, and those of this woman whom I have loved more deeply than I love myself, from the earliest days of our acquaintance. All the same, it worries me to think that when I am gone, she might be left here alone in a strange place, with nobody to turn to for help or advice. And I should be all the more worried if it were not for the knowledge of your own presence, for I believe that you will cherish her, for my sake, as tenderly as you would cherish me. In the event of my death, therefore, I commit her and all my property to your charge, and with all my power I entreat you to handle them both in whatever way you think most likely to console my immortal spirit. And I beseech you, dear sweet lady, not to forget me when I am dead, so that in the next world I can claim to be loved in this world by the fairest woman ever fashioned by Nature. Promise me faithfully that you will carry out these two requests of mine, and I shall undoubtedly die contented.’ As they listened to these words, both the lady and his merchant friend shed many a tear. When he had finished speaking, they soothed him and gave him their word of honour that in the event of his death they would do as he had asked. Very soon afterwards he passed away, and they saw that he was given an honourable funeral.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Elisa holding her peace and hearkening to the praises bestowed by the ladies her companions upon her story, the Queen charged Filostrato tell one of his own, whereupon he began, laughing, "I have been so often rated by so many of you ladies for having imposed on you matter for woeful discourse and such as tended to make you weep, that methinketh I am beholden, an I would in some measure requite you that annoy, to relate somewhat whereby I may make you laugh a little; and I mean therefore to tell you, in a very short story, of a love that, after no worse hindrance than sundry sighs and a brief fright, mingled with shame, came to a happy issue. It is, then, noble ladies, no great while ago since there lived in Romagna a gentleman of great worth and good breeding, called Messer Lizio da Valbona, to whom, well nigh in his old age, it chanced there was born of his wife, Madam Giacomina by name, a daughter, who grew up fair and agreeable beyond any other of the country; and for that she was the only child that remained to her father and mother, they loved and tendered her exceeding dear and guarded her with marvellous diligence, looking to make some great alliance by her. Now there was a young man of the Manardi of Brettinoro, comely and lusty of his person, by name Ricciardo, who much frequented Messer Lizio's house and conversed amain with him and of whom the latter and his lady took no more account than they would have taken of a son of theirs. Now, this Ricciardo, looking once and again upon the young lady and seeing her very fair and sprightly and commendable of manners and fashions, fell desperately in love with her, but was very careful to keep his love secret. The damsel presently became aware thereof and without anywise seeking to shun the stroke, began on like wise to love him; whereat Ricciardo was mightily rejoiced. He had many a time a mind to speak to her, but kept silence of misdoubtance; however, one day, taking courage and opportunity, he said to her, 'I prithee, Caterina, cause me not die of love.' To which she straightway made answer, 'Would God thou wouldst not cause _me_ die!'

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  “Ummm,” Sam hummed on my clit, making me spread my legs like I was pushing a baby out. I held my legs open by my ankles. I was open wide, signaling Sam that I was ready to be finger-fucked. Not a moment too soon, Sam plunged one finger in after the next, dipping all in and out of my Kool-Aid, trying to figure out the flavor. “Come here,” I said to Sam. I could feel Sam’s middle finger inside of me while at the same time I felt Sam’s body lay upon mine. Sam brushed my bangs to the side to join the rest of the strands of my dusty brown shoulder-length hair. She then looked into my dark brown china-shaped eyes, inherited by my half-Chinese, half-black father. “God, I love you so fuckin’ much,” I said with tears in my eyes as I pumped up and down on Sam’s fingers. I was crying because it felt so good. I was crying because I really did love Sam. It felt good to be made to feel so damn good. It felt good to be in love. “I love you too, baby,” Sam replied with such deep sincerity. That’s when I decided that I wanted to fuck Sam too. So I took my middle finger, maneuvered it through the soft hairs leading to Sam’s jungle, and entered my finger in one thrust. As if Sam was trying to upstage me, I felt two fingers massaging the inside of my walls, in search of that G-spot, while a thumb pressed against my clit, providing the ultimate sensation. “Oh, Sam,” I said, lifting my head up and shoving my tongue down Sam’s throat while we plunged our fingers in and out of each other’s pussy as we smacked our bodies up against one another. “My sexy Samantha.” Samantha was my foxy little project chick. With her soft gray eyes, smooth, vanilla-wafer Cover Girl skin, a short cut, showing off her curly loops, tinted with gold-rush blond hair, and standing at only about four feet nine inches, she looked like a short double for that Eva chick from America’s Next Top Model. “Move your hand,” Sam said, pulling her fingers out of me. “Open your lips,” she ordered me, referring to my pussy lips. I took my thumbs, placing one on each lip, and moved the skin back so that my throbbing clit was exposed like a dog’s dick when he’s in heat. Sam did the same with hers as she brought her pelvis down against mine tightly and our clits pressed together. I closed my eyes at the feeling of pure ecstasy. The feeling of being like one with Sam was amazing. I felt like we were connected as she began sliding her clit up and down mine. “Hold on to me tight,” she ordered me.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Two years before his death Francis composed the Canticle to the Sun, which Renan has called the most perfect expression of modern religious feeling.811 It was written at a time when he was beset by temptations, and blindness had begun to set in. The hymn is a pious outburst of passionate love for nature. It soars above any other pastorals of the Middle Ages. Indeed Francis’ love for nature is rare in the records of his age, and puts him into companionship with that large modern company who see poems in the clouds and hear symphonies in flowers. He loved the trees, the stones, birds, and the plants of the field. Above all things he loved the sun, created to illuminate our eyes by day, and the fire which gives us light in the night time, for "God has illuminated our eyes by these two, our brothers." Francis had a message for the brute creation and preached to the birds. "Brother birds," he said on one occasion, "you ought to love and praise your Creator very much. He has given you feathers for clothing, wings for flying, and all things that can be of use to you. You have neither to sow, nor to reap, and yet He takes care of you." And the birds curved their necks and looked at him as if to thank him. He would have had the emperor make a special law against killing or doing any injury to, our sisters, the birds."812 Later tradition narrated very wonderful things about his power over nature,813 as for example the taming of the fierce wolf of Gubbio. He was the terror of the neighborhood. He ran at Francis with open mouth, but laid himself down at Francis’ feet like a lamb at his words, "Brother Wolf, in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to do no evil to me or to any man." Francis promised him forgiveness for all past offences on condition of his never doing harm again to human being. The beast assented to the compact by lowering his head and kneeling before him. He became the pet of Gubbio.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The hours would slip by towards dawn or sunset; flowers would open and close in the bountiful garden; and perhaps, if it should chance to be evening, beggars would come to that garden, singing; ragged fellows who played deftly on their guitars and sang songs whose old melodies hailed from Spain, but whose words sprang straight from the heart of the island: ‘Oh, thou whom I love, thou art small and guileless; Thy lips are as cool as the sea at moonrise. But after the moon there cometh the sun; After the evening there cometh the morning. The sea is warmed by the kiss of the sun, Even so shall my kisses bring warmth to thy lips. Oh, thou whom I love, thou art small and guileless.’ And now Mary need no longer sigh with unrest, need no longer lay her cheek against Stephen’s shoulder; for her rightful place was in Stephen’s arms and there she would be, overwhelmed by the peace that comes at such times to all happy lovers. They would sit together in a little arbour that looked out over miles upon miles of ocean. The water would flush with the after-glow, then change to a soft, indefinite purple; then, fired anew by the African night, would gleam with that curious, deep blue glory for a space before the swift rising of the moon. ‘Thy lips are as cool as the sea at moonrise; but after the moon there cometh the sun.’ And Stephen as she held the girl in her arms, would feel that indeed she was all things to Mary; father, mother, friend and lover, all things; and Mary all things to her—the child, the friend, the belovèd, all things. But Mary, because she was perfect woman, would rest without thought, without exultation, without question; finding no need to question since for her there was now only one thing—Stephen. 2 Time, that most ruthless enemy of lovers, strode callously forward into the spring. It was March, so that down at the noisy Puerto the bougainvilleas were in their full glory, while up in the old town of Orotava bloomed great laden bushes of white camellias. In the garden of the villa the orange trees flowered, and the little arbour that looked over the sea was covered by an ancient wisteria vine whose mighty trunk was as thick as three saplings. But in spite of a haunting shadow of regret at the thought of leaving Orotava, Stephen was deeply and thankfully happy. A happiness such as she had never conceived could be hers, now possessed her body and soul—and Mary also was happy. Stephen would ask her: ‘Do I content you? Tell me, is there anything you want in the world?’ Mary’s answer was always the same; she would say very gravely: ‘Only you, Stephen.’ Ramon had begun to speculate about them, these two Englishwomen who were so devoted. He would shrug his shoulders—Dios! What did it matter?

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  If I hadn’t discovered by the time I was thirteen that I preferred to play hide-and-go-get-it with little girls over little boys, after taking one look at my sexy Samantha I would have definitely lost my appetite for dick and taken on a new craving for pussy. But lucky for me, I never had to even entertain the thought of fuckin’ around with a bunch of hood niggas only to discover that no-sized dick is worth putting up with them and their bullshit. All it took was growing up with Naomi Kensington—aka, my moms—and living the life she subjected me to, to know that I preferred pussy over dick any day. “Honey,” I heard Sam call from the shower. “Come join me. Wash my back.” I loved washing Sam’s back, from her shoulders to the small of her waist. I loved it. With me standing a little under a foot taller than her, towering over her made me feel so protective of her, like she was mine, really mine, unable to function without me. I know damn sure I’m unable to function without her. I love me some Sam, and not just because she was my first and only piece of ass, the woman I learned how to please a woman with, the woman I learned how it felt to be pleased with. It was because she was there when I was sixteen, out on the streets and needing that mother figure, any mother figure, to show me love. Being five years older than me, Sam was twenty-one when I was sixteen, and she was living with some thug-ass nigga named Detail who didn’t do nothing but beat her and fuck her, and usually in that order. He would clock on her over any little thing. If the toast was too brown, if the bed wasn’t made right or she missed a spot when she dusted, he’d get all up in that ass. He demanded perfection. That’s how he got the name Detail. He was meticulous about everything. His car had to be wiped down just right. The bed had to be made to his standard, tight like a hospital bed. Towels had to be hung in a tri-fold manner. I mean, nothing got past that fucker’s eyes. He was a real stickler for detail, to the point where, if you ask me, it was a sickness.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Slightly at a loss, I nevertheless picked them up and gave them to her, but she, with a smile, pushed the flowers away, and I carried them in my hand. ‘So we walked silently for some time, until she took the flowers from my hand and threw them to the pavement, then put her own hand in a black glove with a bell-shaped cuff under my arm, and we walked on side by side.’ ‘Go on,’ said Ivan, ‘and please don’t leave anything out!’ ‘Go on?’ repeated the visitor. ‘Why, you can guess for yourself how it went on.’ He suddenly wiped an unexpected tear with his right sleeve and continued: ‘Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn’t so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other, and that she was living with a different man . . . as I was, too, then . . . with that, what’s her . . .’ ‘With whom?’ asked Homeless. ‘With that . . . well . . . with . . .’ replied the guest, snapping his fingers. ‘You were married?’ ‘Why, yes, that’s why I’m snapping . . . With that . . . Varenka . . . Manechka . . . no, Varenka . . . striped dress, the museum . . . Anyhow, I don’t remember. ‘Well, so she said she went out that day with yellow flowers in her hand so that I would find her at last, and that if it hadn’t happened, she would have poisoned herself, because her life was empty. ‘Yes, love struck us instantly. I knew it that same day, an hour later, when, without having noticed the city, we found ourselves by the Kremlin wall on the embankment. ‘We talked as if we had parted only the day before, as if we had known each other for many years. We arranged to meet the next day at the same place on the Moscow River, and we did. The May sun shone down on us. And soon, very soon, this woman became my secret wife. ‘She used to come to me every afternoon, but I would begin waiting for her in the morning. This waiting expressed itself in the moving around of objects on the table. Ten minutes before, I would sit down by the little window and begin to listen for the banging of the decrepit gate. And how curious: before my meeting with her, few people came to our yard—more simply, no one came—but now it seemed to me that the whole city came flocking there. ‘Bang goes the gate, bang goes my heart, and, imagine, it’s inevitably somebody’s dirty boots level with my face behind the window. A knife-grinder.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  Augustine proudly shows off his son’s prowess in The Teacher, while assuring us that he did not teach the boy. Boys learn with God’s own inborn instruments. But, as usual with Augustine, love sets the atmosphere in which God’s gifts work. The hatred of his father’s and his teachers’ beatings made Augustine adopt a different strategy for dealing with his own son (and, later, his students in the classroom and his colleagues in the monastery): I learned [to speak] as a baby, not inhibited by fear of punishment, surrounded as I was by coddling nurses, laughing games, and happy play. I learned without others’ punitive insistence that I learn, from my own heart’s need to deliver what I was laboring forth [parienda] to the outer world. . . . I picked up words from anyone who spoke to me, not just from tutors, and I somehow did labor forth my feelings in others’ ears. Unfettered inquisitiveness, it is clear, teaches better than do intimidating assignments. (T 1.23) Augustine’s dialogue Order in the Universe, composed near the time of The Teacher, can be taken as one long illustration of that passage on Augustine’s learning in an atmosphere of love. Dealing with young disciples in the dialogue on order, Augustine uses whatever piques the students’ interest—odd noises in a drainpipe, gamecocks, enthusiastic singing in an outhouse—to circle back to the subject of order in the universe. Yet permissive as Augustine was in his pedagogy, he was not starry-eyed about the human drives evidenced in the cradle. He notes the infant’s demands for attention, the envy and anger at other infants competing for that attention. The urge to rule (libido dominandi) is the devil’s first sin of pride and the cause of Adam’s fall, whose traces show in every heir to that primal sin. Despite all this, Godsend, the unwanted child, soon captivated his father and became a kind of laboratory experiment in the wonders of the human mind’s development. This is the boy of whom Augustine wrote, “His talent, if a father’s fondness deceives me not, was full of promise” (Happiness in This Life 1.6).

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I laid in front of her watching before I followed suit by licking my finger and placing it inside her as well. Her wet pussy took in both of our fingers. “Sin, Sin, I love you,” Sam said as she opened her eyes and looked deeply into mine. With my finger still pleasing her, I sat up and began kissing her passionately. Sam took her finger out of herself and placed both hands on my face. “I do love you so much, Sin. You just don’t know.” Sam’s voice cracked and before she could hold back, as the cum filled my hand, tears filled her eyes. “I love you too, Samantha,” I said. “I love you too.” The next thing I knew Sam was in my arms, weeping. Without her saying a word I knew what was going on in her mind. She was thinking about Detail. “You saved me,” Sam said. “I could never repay you, Sin. You saved me from a life of hell when you—” “Shhh,” I said, placing my index finger, the same finger I had just fucked her with, over her lips. She then stuck her tongue out and began licking my finger up and down like it was a dick. I pulled her to me by the finger that was in her mouth and tongued her down. The harder I kissed her the more she cried. I knew what it was like to love someone so much that just thinking about that person stirred up uncontrollable emotions. I knew because I loved Sam that same way. I loved her so much that I would die for her. I would kill for her and she knew it. She knew it because I had proven it when I put that ten-inch butcher knife into Detail’s back. I don’t know what came over me that day. I just walked in the apartment and saw Detail beating Sam to a pulp, and she wouldn’t fight back. She just wouldn’t fight back, so I had to fight back for her. I was a project chick, and used to throwing them blows. After all, I’d fought muthafuckas over my stupid-ass name all the time. But even fighting over my name became secondary to all the blows I had to throw because of kids talking about my mother. You know how it was back in the day—you fight one sibling and you had to fight them all. But you best believe I caught them hoes slippin’ one by one and beat their asses. But the one time they caught me, I got suspended and sent home with a black eye and a busted nose. My moms had the nerve to fuss me out, talkin’ about all I ever did was fight and that I was out of school more for fighting than I was in school for learning.