Dangerous Liaisons Quotes

When one woman strikes at the heart of another, she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal.

You cannot!' Tatiana said sharply. 'If you order a gun there is only a single shot, and once delivered the doors are locked and will not open until it has been fired.

Ferret took out a folded scrap of paper and passed it to him. 'My guy Ben doesn't know where the other club is, but the girls are being shipped in from here, a rehab centre in Newtonville.' 'What's this other place called?' Tazeem asked as he slipped the scrap of paper into his pocket. 'The place is just known as The Club. But the behind-the-scenes bit that only the real big spenders get to see, there's no official name, 'cause officially it doesn't exist, that's know as The Zombie Room.

The November evening had a bite; it nibbled not-quite-gently at her cheeks and ears. In Virginia the late autumn was a lover, still, but a dangerous one.

Be careful with the mask. You may get used to it.

One gets bored of everything, my Angel, it’s a law of nature; it’s not my fault.

You must observe, when you write to any one, it is for them, and not for yourself: you must endeavour, then, to write to please them, and not give them your thoughts.

There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned. (Anthony and Cleopatra - William Shakespeare.)

Agonized by her longing to go on thinking of her lover, and her fear of damnation if she does, she has hit on the idea of praying God to make her forget him and as she keeps on making this prayer every minute of the day, she's found a way of never letting him out of her mind.

Now I mention neglect, you resemble those who send regularly to inquire of the state of health of their sick friends, and who never concern themselves about the answer.

hatred is always more ingenious and clear sighted than friendship.

There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned. (Anthony & Cleopatra - Shakespeare.

he calculates how far a man can proceed in villainy without risking reputation, and has chosen women for his victims, that his sacrifices may be wicked and cruel without danger.

My thoughts were my own, and I was exasperated to have them either surprised or drawn from me against my will.

Upper-class Victorians feared an overabundance of passion, believing it only complicated matters and, more dangerously, led to thoughts of unrealistic liaisons between persons of unequal social stations.

The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His ‘free’ lovers and servants—’sons’ is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own’. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.

I loathe my childhood and all that remains of it. Jean-Paul Sartre, Words

…Tender sympathy which is one of the most dangerous snares of love

What he said was so full of truth and lies it seemed his head would roll off his neck with the heaviness of it.

She felt something comforting about his attentiveness; it was like having an earthbound deity watching over her, and she warmed in his sun constantly shining on her

People don’t think to ask for anything. They don’t want to be told no.

… in those looks from which there fliwed a poison so much more dangerous in that it was poured forth without intent and received without kistrust.

Oh ! qu’est-ce donc que l’amour, s’il nous fait regretter jusqu’aux dangers auxquels il nous expose.

should have been with you this morning; but my doctor will not allow me to miss a day from my bath.

They replace the seducing charms with attractive goodness and cheerfulness, whose charms increase with their years.

hope soon to convince you, that religion only can give even in this world that solid and durable happiness, which is vainly sought in the blindness of human passions.

Valmont is quite another matter: difficult to keep, and dangerous to leave. He demands great skill, or, if you have none, great tractability.

At length the day arrived which gave birth to my misfortune;

vanity, and an exalted imagination can bring forth prodigies.

acquired the penetrating glance, which experience, however, has taught me not to place an entire confidence in, but which has so seldom deceived me.

It was then I was ascertained that love, which is represented as the first cause of all our pleasure, is at most but the pretence.

The profligate wretch has his virtues as well as the virtuous man his weaknesses.

If they do not see me at work, they shall at least see my work completed; they will then have nothing to do but to admire and applaud: for they shall applaud.

What can I say? — I love, — yes, I love to distraction!

Man enjoys the happiness he feels, woman that she gives.

Without doubt a letter appears very unnecessary when we can see one another freely — What could it say that a word, or look, or even silence itself, could not express?

Moreover, a remark I am astonished you have not made, is, that nothing is so difficult in love, as to write what one does not feel.

the true maxim is, not give into excess, but with those one wishes to be rid of.

for she who has no respect for her mother, will never have any for herself:

is from forty to fifty that grief for faded beauties rage, to be forced to abandon pretensions and pleasures to which the mind is still attached, make almost all women peevish and ridiculous.

If TV sitcoms idealized the American suburbs of the 1960s, the works of the artistic elite disparaged them ceaselessly, then and now. The songs of Pete Seeger, novels like Revolutionary Road, the stories of John Cheever, movies like Pleasantville and American Beauty, television series like Mad Men: in all of them, that long-ago land of lawns and houses is depicted as a country of stultifying conformity and cultural emptiness, sexual hypocrisy, alcoholism, and spiritual despair. Privilege murders the senses there, the creatives tell us. Gender roles strangle freedom. Family life turns the heart of adventure to ashes. There’s bigotry and gossip and dangerous liaisons behind every closed door. Oh, the soul, the human soul! In the suburbs of fiction, she is forever dying. But

He would elevate you to the first rank among the modish women; that is the way to gain consistency in life, and not sit blushing and crying as if your nuns had made you eat your dinner on your knees.

I soon discovered that that enchanting form, which alone had raised my admiration, was the smallest of your attractions; your celestial soul astonished and seduced mine; I admired your beauty, but adored your virtue.

no longer existed but by you and for you; and yet I call on yourself to witness, if ever in the gaiety of rural amusements, or in the more serious conversations, a word ever escaped from me that could betray the secret of my heart.

Frightened of the peril she is courting, she would like to stop but cannot hold back. Care and skill can shorten the steps she takes: nothing can prevent them succeeding each other. Sometimes, unable to face the danger, she closes her eyes and lets herself go, putting her fate in my hands. More often some new fear rouses her to new efforts. In her mortal terror she tries once more to retreat, and exhausts her strength in regaining a little ground; but soon some magic power transplants her yet nearer the danger she has vainly attempted to fly.

But the danger of such liaisons is that, though the subjection of the woman may briefly allay the jealousy of the man, it eventually makes it even more demanding. He reaches the point of treating his mistress like one of those prisoners who are so closely guarded that the light in their cell is never turned off.

Introduced into the world whilst yet a girl, I was devoted by my situation to silence and inaction; this time I made use of for reflection and observation. Looked upon as thoughtless and heedless, paying little attention to the discourses that were held out to me, I carefully laid up those that were meant to be concealed from me.

Now, I'm not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realize that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn't understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn't matter to me. And it's not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I'll do anything you say.

Your portrait have I said? but a letter is the portrait of the soul; it has not, like a cold image, that degree of stagnation so opposite to love; it yields to all our actions by turns; it becomes animated, gives us enjoyment, and sinks into repose — All your sentiments are precious to me; and will you deprive me of the means of becoming possessed of them?

Look at me," she ordered softly as she leaned her head against the wall behind her. Slowly, he obeyed. Lifting his lashes, he gazed into her eyes. "Keep looking at me, Rohan." She held his stare as he continued making love to her. "I love you. God, I love you, past all reason." She felt him trembling with emotion, but she needed him to know here and now that this was not a liaison with just anyone. This time, he was with someone who loved him beyond the point of all reckoning. A woman who'd fight for him, who, she feared, would even die for him, gladly, if it came down to it. "Yes," she breathed as she petted him, soothing away his grief. "Give it all to me, darling. I can take it. I know who you are." She saw the torment and the heavy haze of pleasure in his eyes, still holding his stormy gaze as he reached his climax. He held her in a crushing embrace, looking helplessly into her eyes as he filled her body with the life-giving liquid of his seed. His massive thrusts in release caressed her core so deeply that she, too, achieved her climax, succumbing to the mind-melting wonder of their total union.

And, so, what was it that elevated Rubi from dictator's son-in-law to movie star's husband to the sort of man who might capture the hand of the world's wealthiest heiress? Well, there was his native charm. People who knew him, even if only casually, even if they were predisposed to be suspicious or resentful of him, came away liking him. He picked up checks; he had courtly manners; he kept the party gay and lively; he was attentive to women but made men feel at ease; he was smoothly quick to rise from his chair when introduced, to open doors, to light a lady's cigarette ("I have the fastest cigarette lighter in the house," he once boasted): the quintessential chivalrous gent of manners. The encomia, if bland, were universal. "He's a very nice guy," swore gossip columnist Earl Wilson, who stayed with Rubi in Paris. ""I'm fond of him," said John Perona, owner of New York's El Morocco. "Rubi's got a nice personality and is completely masculine," attested a New York clubgoer. "He has a lot of men friends, which, I suppose, is unusual. Aly Khan, for instance, has few male friends. But everyone I know thinks Rubi is a good guy." "He is one of the nicest guys I know," declared that famed chum of famed playboys Peter Lawford. "A really charming man- witty, fun to be with, and a he-man." There were a few tricks to his trade. A society photographer judged him with a professional eye thus: "He can meet you for a minute and a month later remember you very well." An author who played polo with him put it this way: "He had a trick that never failed. When he spoke with someone, whether man or woman, it seemed as if the rest of the world had lost all interest for him. He could hang on the words of a woman or man who spoke only banalities as if the very future of the world- and his future, especially- depended on those words." But there was something deeper to his charm, something irresistible in particular when he turned it on women. It didn't reveal itself in photos, and not every woman was susceptible to it, but it was palpable and, when it worked, unforgettable. Hollywood dirt doyenne Hedda Hoppe declared, "A friend says he has the most perfect manners she has ever encountered. He wraps his charm around your shoulders like a Russian sable coat." Gossip columnist Shelia Graham was chary when invited to bring her eleven-year-old daughter to a lunch with Rubi in London, and her wariness was transmitted to the girl, who wiped her hand off on her dress after Rubi kissed it in a formal greeting; by the end of lunch, he had won the child over with his enthusiastic, spontaneous manner, full of compliments but never cloying. "All done effortlessly," Graham marveled. "He was probably a charming baby, I am sure that women rushed to coo over him in the cradle." Elsa Maxwell, yet another gossip, but also a society gadabout and hostess who claimed a key role in at least one of Rubi's famous liaisons, put it thus: "You expect Rubi to be a very dangerous young man who personifies the wolf. Instead, you meet someone who is so unbelievably charming and thoughtful that you are put off-guard before you know it." But charm would only take a man so far. Rubi was becoming and international legend not because he could fascinate a young girl but because he could intoxicate sophisticated women. p124

Still, I think that one of the most fundamental problems is want of discipline. Homes that severely restrict viewing hours, insist on family reading, encourage debate on good books, talk about the quality and the morality of television programs they do see, rarely or never allow children to watch television without an adult being present (in other words, refusing to let the TV become an unpaid nanny), and generally develop a host of other interests, are not likely to be greatly contaminated by the medium, while still enjoying its numerous benefits. But what will produce such families, if not godly parents and the power of the Holy Spirit in and through biblical preaching, teaching, example, and witness? The sad fact is that unless families have a tremendously strong moral base, they will not perceive the dangers in the popular culture; or, if they perceive them, they will not have the stamina to oppose them. There is little point in preachers disgorging all the sad statistics about how many hours of television the average American watches per week, or how many murders a child has witnessed on television by the age of six, or how a teenager has failed to think linearly because of the twenty thousand hours of flickering images he or she has watched, unless the preacher, by the grace of God, is establishing a radically different lifestyle, and serving as a vehicle of grace to enable the people in his congregation to pursue it with determination, joy, and a sense of adventurous, God-pleasing freedom. Meanwhile, the harsh reality is that most Americans, including most of those in our churches, have been so shaped by the popular culture that no thoughtful preacher can afford to ignore the impact. The combination of music and visual presentation, often highly suggestive, is no longer novel. Casual sexual liaisons are everywhere, not least in many of our churches, often with little shame. “Get even” is a common dramatic theme. Strength is commonly confused with lawless brutality. Most advertising titillates our sin of covetousness. This is the air we breathe; this is our culture.

Of course Sartre and Beauvoir were not alone in being seduced by Communism. Many of the Auden generation, on both sides of the Channel, had become infatuated with the socialist 'paradise', and remained blind to its atrocities.

Useful narrative writing calls for inspiration and imagination fueled by passion and tempered by compassion, a delicate tightrope for any paper tiger to walk. To venture into deep waters where a person never before journeyed is to tempt a dangerous liaison with fate. A cautionary edict proclaims that a wise person should stay out of such heady waters, an admonitory diktat that exempts only rare people blessed with the split-brain temperament of an alpha/omega ambivert. Writing is an activity best suited for a freewheeling optimist who exhibits genuine enthusiasm for life’s rollercoaster ride immured shoulder to shoulder with a pensive recluse as a platonic traveling companion to eyewitness, record, and shed enlightenment upon a person’s journey through the vortex of infinite time and space.

indicates that we should perhaps not be too cynical about the many glowing tributes paid to Michael Jackson by Macaulay Culkin and many of his other boy friends. It is clear from Sandfort’s findings that boys can respond positively to grown-ups who take an interest in them and are at ease in young company.

If they had instead been disposed to make trouble for the star there can be little doubt his fate would have been sealed. At the very least his career and reputation would have been damaged beyond repair. Pellicano is said to have been involved in paying off dozens of other potential witnesses, some of whom received fabulous gifts in suspicious circumstances.

The line of apologetics is unconvincing to anyone who has studied Michael’s career, in which he began to show himself as a feisty player in his own destiny even before his age hit double figures, and as an independent business negotiator by his mid-teens – in both cases in defiance of an overbearing father who totally dominated his older brothers. As we saw in Chapter Eight, smacked across the face by his father Joseph for failing to execute a dance step the right way, nine-year-old Michael knew just how to hit back. “Hit me again”, he said, “it’ll be the last time I ever sing.”[540

] In any case, however much Michael may have wanted to live the life of a child his hormones were those of an adult: he may have missed out on childhood, but not on puberty.

Those who are without children, and without even the hope of having any, feel all too keenly what it is to be excluded from this great universe of human meaning. They feel themselves as outsiders to society and even to humanity, standing in the cold, condemned for ever to experience the warmth and fulfilment of family life at best through stolen moments with other people’s children, if at all. It may be that they rarely come nearer the real thing than seeing the idealised families of the TV commercials and sitcoms: their pain will be all the greater because they cannot see that real parenthood often has its agonies and disappointments too. The fact that their view of what they are missing may be unrealistic is neither here nor there. It is their feelings that concern us for the moment, their pain at being left out, sidelined, on the margins of life.

Vienna's reputation as a city of luxury, merrymaking and indulgence actually lies much further in the past, in the time of the Babenbergs at whose courts the Minnesinger were prestigious guests, similar to publicity-seeking pop stars of today. the half-censorious, half-envious comments of foreigners often reflect the ambivalence that so many have felt about a city that was both seductive and dangerous. Such was indeed how Grillparzer described the city he loved and hated in his "Farewell to Vienna"(1843) though he had more in mind than simply the temptations of the flesh. But if Vienna was insidiously threatening under its hedonistic surface for a Grillparzer, others have simply regarded it as cheerfully, even shamelessly, immoral. 'lhe humanist scholar Enea Silvio Piccolomini, private secretary to Friedrich III and subsequently elected Pope Pius II, expressed his astonishment at the sexual freedom of the Viennese in a letter to a fellow humanist in Basel written in 1450: "'lhe number of whores is very great, and wives seem disinclined to confine their affections to a single man; knights frequently visit the wives of burghers. 'lhe men put out some wine for them and leave the house. Many girls marry without the permission of their fathers and widows don't observe the year of mourning." 'the local equivalent of the Roman cicisbeo is an enduring feature of Viennese society, and the present author remembers a respectable middle-class intellectual (now dead) who habitually went on holiday with both wife and mistress in tow. Irregular liaisons are celebrated in a Viennese joke about two men who meet for the first time at a party. By way of conversation one says to the other: "You see those two attractive ladies chatting to each other over there? Well, the brunette is my wife and the blonde is my mistress." "that's funny," says his new friend; "I was just about to say the same thing, only the other way round." In Biedermeier Vienna (1815-48), menages d trois seem not to have been uncommon, since the gallant who became a friend of the family was officially known as the Hausfreund. 'the ambiguous status of such a Hausfreund features in a Wienerlied written in 1856 by the usually non-risque Johann Baptist Moser. It con-terns a certain Herr von Hecht, who is evidently a very good friend of the family of the narrator. 'lhe first six lines of the song innocently praise the latter's wife, who is so delightful and companionable that "his sky is always blue"; but the next six relate how she imported a "friend", Herr von Hecht, and did so "immediately after the wedding". This friend loves the children so much "they could be his own." And indeed, the younger one looks remarkably like Herr von Hecht, who has promised that the boy will inherit from him, "which can't be bad, eh?" the faux-naivete with which this apparently commonplace situation is described seems to have delighted Moser's public-the song was immensely popular then and is still sung today.

Non-teenagers might find his appeal difficult to understand, as he isn’t especially handsome, or big, or even funny; his features are striking only in their regularity, the overall effect being one of solidity, steadiness, the quiet self-assurance one might associate with, for instance, a long-established and successful bank. But that, in fact, is the whole point. One look at Titch, in his regulation Dubarrys, Ireland jersey and freshly topped-up salon tan, and you can see his whole future stretched out before him: you can tell that he will, when he leaves this place, go on to get a good job (banking/insurance/consultancy), marry a nice girl (probably from the Dublin 18 area), settle down in a decent neighbourhood (see above) and about fifteen years from now produce a Titch Version 2.0 who will think his old man is a bit of a knob sometimes but basically all right. The danger of him ever drastically changing – like some day joining a cult, or having a nervous breakdown, or developing out of nowhere a sudden burning need to express himself and taking up some ruinously expensive and embarrassing-to-all-that-know-him discipline, like modern dance, or interpreting the songs of Joni Mitchell in a voice that, after all these years, is revealed to be disquietingly feminine – is negligible. Titch, in short, is so remarkably unremarkable that he has become a kind of embodiment of his socioeconomic class; a friendship/sexual liaison with Titch has therefore come to be seen as a kind of self-endorsement, a badge of Normality, which at this point in life is a highly prized commodity.

Kissing, lapping, and licking, he suckled my boyish, sinewy physique, leaving no parts unexplored. Tilting my firm buttocks to his jabbing tongue, he savored my parting orifice with expert precision. Squirming to such tantalizing simulations, I moaned loudly, only to be silenced by his powerful masculine palms. Cupping my whimpering ecstasies, he attempted to quiet my swelling crescendos. I desired his length, yet he kept it at bay, teasing, luring me further into his unscrupulous web of physiological manipulation. He was playing his game of dangerous liaisons. I had not been taught these rules at the Bahriji, nor by any of my ‘big brothers.’ Like a game of chess, I was left to maneuver this perfidious mind game as if I were grown, in person and in spirit. For now, P’s tantalization was driving me to desirous insanity. I wanted him and he made me beg for the object of my affection.

It’s surely not enough to blame the whole thing on Erasmus. Countless translators have made countless errors in texts through the ages, and most of them have had nothing like the resonance or impact that Erasmus’ mix-up of pithos and pyxis has had. But somehow, he coined an idea which has echoed through the centuries. Everything used to be okay, but then a single, irreversible bad decision was made, and now we all live with the consequences forever. It’s reassuring in a way: the problem was caused long before we were born and will persist long after our deaths, so there’s nothing we can really do about it. In the immortal words of Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons, it’s beyond my control. It allows us to be children again: injustice, cruelty and disease are all someone else’s fault, so it isn’t our problem to try and fix them.

from fathers cohabiting with daughters, to husbands selling wives, to mothers conniving illicit liaisons for daughters. The danger came from a growing population that had stopped disappearing into the wilderness. Reid was appalled by the filthy refugees living in railroad cars, an uncomfortable foreshadowing of twentieth-century trailer trash.

Pretending to be the heroine in her novels, she could flee the dangers a true liaison would involve. In her mind, love equated loss and after so many years alone, she seemed unwilling to take that risk again.

Legal analysts said the entertainer’s significant support for the family would inevitably cast some doubts on their denials of any molestation.

Brett’s mother, Marie Lisbeth, added to the ever-growing picture of mothers around Jackson who struck trial followers as overly star-struck, trusting and uncritically devoted to their idol and benefactor.