virtuouslibertines69

[virtuouslibertines69]

"It is those arms of yours bewitching and far away that draw me, and the wind is nothing but your breath from the abyss," - Filippo Marinetti, tr. by Roberta L. Payne, from “To the Racing Car,”

Art by Hiroko Shiina

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“The first time I met death, it was at a ball and we danced a waltz.” - Charlotte Featherstone, Seduction & Scandal

Photography by Laura Makabresku

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"The smell of the wine and the food sickened me. I am used to the sweet perfume of the heather, and the pure resinous odour of the pines. I cannot breathe in such an atmosphere as there is down below there." - Théophile Gautier, Captain Fracasse

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"I love the mists which veil with mystery or real things. Above all I love cool shadows. I hate life. I do not know how or why I am still alive. Everything I write is useless, helpless, feeble: feeble as my thoughts, helpless as my heart, useless as my life." - Renée Vivien, tr. by Jeanette H. Foster, from “A Woman Appeared To Me,”

Art by Kamil Vojnar

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"Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. Nothing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all." - Gore Vidal

Photography by Aurelio Monge

[virtuouslibertines69]

"... a knife is a faithful friend and servant; it never betrays or fails its master, if he is careful to give it a drink now and then, for a knife is often thirsty you know." - Théophile Gautier, Captain Fracasse

Art by Annita Maslov

[virtuouslibertines69]

"My mouth still houses century-old magic. In my ears I hear a ringing and a singing and no God." - Yvan Goll, from The Wet Flame of Your Tongue: Poems; “The Holy Body,”

Photography by Diana Dihaze

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Even though it inspires some of the world's greatest literature, music, and art, obsessive love is one of the most potent and compelling of tortures and one of the most difficult to overcome -- especially because it feels beyond conscious control. Tormented lovers try the patience even of those who truly love them, because the sufferers do not desire help extricating themselves though they claim to be seeking it; this is an illness from which no one wants to be cured." - Jeanne Safer, The Golden Condom: And Other Essays on Love Lost and Found

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"For enjoyment seems to me the true aim of life and the only useful thing in the world. God has so willed it, for it was He who made women, perfumes, light, lovely flowers, good wines, prancing horses, greyhounds, and Angora cats; nor did he say to his angels: "Be virtuous," but: "Love;" and he gave us a mouth, more sensitive than the rest of the skin, with which to kiss women, eyes uplifted to see the light, a subtle sense of smell to inhale the soul of flowers, well-knit thighs to press the sides of stallions and fly swifter than thought without railroad or steamboat, delicate hands with which to caress the long head of the greyhound, the velvety back of the cat, and the gleaming shoulders of creatures of doubtful virtue; in a word, he bestowed only upon us the threefold, glorious privilege of drinking without being thirsty, of striking a light, and of making love at all seasons, which distinguishes us from the brute much more than the custom of reading newspapers and drawing maps." - Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin

[virtuouslibertines69]

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” - Joseph Campbell

Art by Te Hu on ArtStation

[virtuouslibertines69]

"June, you have killed my sincerity too. I will never again know who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You are the woman I want to be. I see in you that part of me which is you. I feel compassion for your childish pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madness." - Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Art by zagidullina

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Nothing is really beautiful but that which cannot be made use of; everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and the needs of man are vile and disgusting, like his poor, weak nature.—The most useful part of a house is the privy." - Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin

Digital art by Leslie Ann O’Dell

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"Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,–a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss." - Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

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"But nothing makes a room feel emptier than wanting someone in it." - Calla Quinn, All the Time

Photography by Anja Niemi

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"It is envy that crawls and wriggles through all these paternal homilies; however careful it may be to hide itself, you can see its flat little viper's head from time to time gleaming above the metaphors and rhetorical figures; you surprise it licking with its forked tongue its lips blue with venom, you hear it hissing softly in the shadow of an insidious epithet." - Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin

Art by Leslie Ann O'Dell

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"I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one." - Charles Bukowski

Photography by Kiyo Murakami

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"I exaggerate everything I fear." - Anne Sexton, from a letter to Linda Gray Sexton wr. c. July 1967