Quotes Archive

I don’t think England should be represented abroad by an unmarried man… It might lead to complications. Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance Favorite0

It is also, you will notice, foreign. We find it helpful to associate sexual products and practices with foreigners because—naturally—we could not possibly have invented them. (…) Abroad is where sex happens and where the British are most at risk. Sarah Ferguson is trapped having her toes sucked in France, Hugh Grant

Remember that for most of the last century this country’s iconic woman—our Madonna, as it were (in both the Catholic and the American senses)—was Queen Victoria. She might have been sex-on-a-stick for poor Prince Albert, and maybe that funny Scottish chap, but not for anyone else. For the rest of us, sex—unless

The reasons for non-consummation are the same as ever, she reports, in spite of our apparent enlightenment on sexual matters. “Some fail to consummate because of parental prohibition: they think their parents would be against it. Some need to be told it’s all right to do this thing. Some married women have

Others say they’re both Christian and so didn’t do it before they got married—and then cannot bear to do it after marriage. For them, sex has been built up into such a magnificence, with the Earth moving and the communion of the spirit that it can seem such a disappointment the first

In some bedrooms, it seems, the Victorian age lives on. There are still men like John Ruskin, who failed to consummate his marriage due to the shock, on his wedding night, of finding out that women had pubic hair; hitherto he had only seen smoothly sculpted, “naked” classical statues. Ross Clark, Not

As for sex, some Brits take a perverse delight in the idea that we are a nation of uptight neurotics. Cosmo Landesman, “May we have the pleasure?”, The Guardian, Saturday October 17, 1998 Favorite0

The British consider sex far too fleshy for comfort. Henry Porter, “Too close for our comfort”, The Observer, 13 October 1996 Favorite0

There was a time when failing to consummate a marriage was something to sing about: before the advent of the monasteries, which took celibates out of circulation, not doing it with your husband or wife was seen as a virtue. Ross Clark, “Not tonight, darling”, Daily Telegraph, 10 August 1996 Favorite0

But according to Julia Cole… it is not the broad technical details that modern married couples lack so much as the artistry. A wag once commented that school sex education told you everything about the sexual act—except for the fact that you would very likely enjoy it. Ross Clark, Not tonight, darling,