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Human sexual activity

manner in which humans engage sexually

Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality.

Sex is a part of love. You shouldn't go around doing it unless you are in love. —Bettie Page
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.
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
I think that sex is necessary and bankers are not. —Lancelot Hogben
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
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.
—Julia Serrano
Sex is an antidote to death, or at least, an adequate placebo.
— Tim Pratt
Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness. —Wilhelm Reich
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
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.
—William Moulton Marston
The major civilizing force in the world is not religion, it is sex.
— Hugh Hefner
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

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

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  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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, II, x, 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, xvi; later quoted by Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, part II, 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.

B

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  • 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)
  • 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)
  • Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.
  • "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!"
  • 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.
  • There is more difference within the sexes than between them.

C

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  • Like and enjoy; to will and act is one:
    We only sin when Love’s rites are not done.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

D

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  • Nothing is better than sex and anyone who says so has never had a good woman.
  • It is very hard for a man to ask questions about sex. The smart ones do.
  • 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.
  • ’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.

E

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  • "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?"
  • 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), Chapter 4

F

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  • 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.
  • 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.

G

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  • 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.
  • 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!
  • 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.
  • 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.

H

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  • "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."
  • 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)
  • 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.
  • Mr. Mercaptan went on to preach a brilliant sermon on that melancholy sexual perversion known as continence.
  • A woman makes a guy come, it's standard. A guy makes a woman come, it's talent.
  • 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.

J

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  • The great thing about sex is that everybody has an opinion about it and you can't say "Oh you're not an expert."
  • ’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.
  • The Vatican argument is that sexual intercourse need not be for procreation but it must always be open to procreation. This is based on an appeal to natural e deduced from function. Since the sexual organs are by nature generative, to close off the possibility of transmission of life in their use is to go against nature. However, the function of the sexual organs is not exclusively procreative. They are a source of pleasure and a means of mutual self-giving expressive of the love and union of the couple. They are always relational, whereas they are not always generative.
    • David Clyde Jones, Biblical Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1994), p. 165.

K

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  • 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.
  • 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.

J

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K

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L

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  • 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

M

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  • 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.
  • [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
  • 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.
  • 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

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O

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P

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  • Sex is a part of love. You shouldn't go around doing it unless you are in love.
  • 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...
  • 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

Q

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R

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  • 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.
  • 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!

S

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  • 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."
  • 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.
  • Nay, but to live
    In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,
    Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
    Over the nasty sty,—
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

T

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  • 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.
 
The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. ~ Pierre Trudeau
  • 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 by 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.

U

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V

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W

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  • All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.
  • 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)
  • 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.
  • 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

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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

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References

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