Don't even try to explain a master!

kiss: it can hardly be seen; it is but for lips which understand each
other exactly - understand each other so perfectly that any reflection
about the matter is but impertinence and folly. He who is twenty and
does not grasp the existence of the categorical imperative, "Enjoy
thyself" - he is a fool; and he who does not seize the opportunity is
and remains a Christiansfelder (a Herrnhutian Pietist).



However, you are all unhappy lovers, and that is why you are not
satisfied with woman as she is. The gods forbid! As she is, she pleases
me, just as she is. Even Constantine's category of "the joke" seems to
contain a secret desire. I, on the other hand, I am gallant. And why
not? Gallantry costs one nothing and gives one all and is the condition
for all erotic pleasure. Gallantry is the Masonic language of the senses
and of voluptuousness, between man and woman. It is a natural language,
as love's language in general is. It consists not of sounds but of
desires disguised and of ever-changing wishes. That an unhappy lover may
be ungallant enough to wish to convert his deficit into a draught
payable in immortality - that I understand well enough. That is to say,
I for my part do not understand it; for to me a woman has sufficient
intrinsic value. I assure every woman of this, it is the truth; and at
the same time it is certain that I am the only one who is not deceived
by this truth. As to whether a despoiled woman is worth less than man -
about that I find no information in my price list. I do not pick flowers
already broken; I leave them to the married men to use for Shrove-tide
decoration. Whether e.g. Edward


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