Great Throughts Treasury

"The splendor and metaphysical reality of morality flashes forth only when the absolute goodness is seen not merely as the platonic idea, but as the living God."

"The unique profundity of sex in the physical sphere is sufficiently shown by the simple fact that a mans attitude towards it is of incomparably greater moral significance than his attitude towards other bodily appetites. Surrender to sexual desire for its own sake defiles a man in a way that gluttony, for example, can never do. It wounds him to the core of his being, and he becomes in an absolutely different and novel fashion guilty of sin .... Sex can indeed keep silence, but when it speaks it is no mere obiter dictum, but a voice from the depths, the utterance of something central and of the utmost significance. In and with sex, man, in a special sense, gives himself."

"Every manifestation of sex produces an effect which transcends the physical sphere and, in a fashion quite unlike the other bodily desires, involves the soul deeply in its passion .... The positive and negative values attaching to sex belong to a level far deeper than those which attach to the other bodily appetites."

"Every abuse of sex further involves a specific defilement... aspects which sex displays when it is isolated and no longer formed from within by wedded love and the consciousness of Gods sanction namely, the siren-song of sensual attraction with its poisonous sweetness, and diabolic evil lust display a peculiar power to corrupt and defile the soul. The moment any man in his employment of sex wills one of these two aspects, and gives himself up to it, he incurs a mysterious defilement and separates himself in an altogether unique fashion from God."