How exquisite that gaze of yours would be if you were being whipped to death, in the last agony.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch in Venus in Furs (1870)
Added by Lucian Velea
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The more devoted a woman shows herself, the sooner the man sobers down and becomes domineering. The more cruelly she treats him and the more faithless she is, the worse she uses him, the more wantonly she plays with him, the less pity she shows him, by so much the more will she increase his desire, be loved, worshipped by him. So it has always been, since the time of Helen and Delilah, down to Catherine the Second and Lola Montez.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch in Venus in Furs (1870), translated by Fernanda Savage
Added by Dan Costinaş
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That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work. At present we have only the choice of being hammer or anvil, and I was the kind of donkey who let a woman make a slave of him, do you understand? The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch in Venus in Furs (1870), translated by Fernanda Savage
Added by Dan Costinaş
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