At the dawn of art – at the time when man himself was only in the process of becoming recognizably human – the erotic and the sacred were inextricably fused with one another.

– Edward Lucie-Smith 

Since the earliest times the obsessive, unreasonable nature of physical desire has sought relief in images, and to give these images a form by which Venus may cease to become vulgar and become celestial has been one of the recurring aims of European art.

– Kenneth Clark

The fact remains, though, that erotic impulses, whether evident or disguised, are the nearest thing to supernatural agents that everyone encounters in the routines of daily existence.

– Brain Stableford

And in fact, artistic experience lies so incredibly near to sexual experience, to its pain and its delight, that both phenomena are really only different forms of one and the same yearning and joy.

– Rilke

The hope of reaching the eternal in the momentary.

– Wylie Sypher

Venus inspires the sleeping god with visions of victory and of its prize: the dream creation of her own grave beauty.

– Godfrey

His most important inspiration sprang from the neurotic tensions of his youth rather than from the healthy, even athletic, objectivity of his maturity.

– William S. Liberman

 Her sweet audacities delight me;

That dazzling beauty is

Love’s slippery precipice.

– Horace

And his desire pictured to him extraordinary promiscuities which he believed could be realized with the facility of dreams and the solemnity of liturgic ceremonies.

But the higher she rose in his imagination the further she seemed removed from him in reality.

– D’Annunzio

 The female being knew that Ed wanted to have sex with her. But with a “mirthful” expression she told him something like “Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you, but that’s not the way it’s going to be.” Instead, she explained that they needed his sperm for “their needs…to create special babies” and “for work we’re doing to help the people of your planet.”

– John E. Mack

 And he went home and lived a long time, but he would never kiss any other lady because he had kissed the queen of the fairies, and he would never drink common wine because he had drunk enchanted wine.

– Arthur Machen