Quotes about obscenity

"My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language."

Gibbon, Edward on obscenity   

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"Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-habit? If not that would have to say consummate I suppose. Use your own good taste and judgment."

Hemingway, Ernest on obscenity   

"Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art -- or almost the only stuff."

Lawrence, D. H. on obscenity   

"Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another."

Marcuse, Herbert on obscenity   

"Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk."

Miller, Henry on obscenity   

"Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on obscenity
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"Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate."

Russell, Bertrand on obscenity   

"Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life... is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret."

Shelley, Percy Bysshe on obscenity   

"Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent."

White, Elwyn Brooks on obscenity
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"The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art."

Wilde, Oscar on obscenity