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Quotes from Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson — Camille Paglia

born 1947 United States

← All quotes by Camille Paglia

76 quotes

Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Nefertiti is like Athena born from the brow of Zeus, a head-heavy armored goddess. She is beautiful but desexed.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

The mystique of the femme fatale cannot be perfectly translated into male terms.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

I subscribe to Jung's theory of synchronicity.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

The book of Genesis is a male declaration of independence from the ancient mother-cults. Its challenge to nature, so sexist to modern ears, marks one of the crucial moments in western history.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Every man harbors an inner female territory ruled by his mother, from whom he can never entirely break free.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Everything great in western culture has come from the quarrel with nature.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Effeminate men have suffered a bad press the world over.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Simply follow nature, Rousseau declares. Sade, laughing grimly, agrees.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

In every premenstrual woman struggling to govern her temper, sky-cult wars again with earth-cult.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Tranvestism is far more common among men, I noted, because it originates in the primary relation of mother and son.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

The search for freedom through sex is doomed to failure.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Oil painting and color, said Michelangelo, are for “women and the lazy.” His sharp-edged Apollonian style is the only way to beat back mother nature.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Everything great in western civilization has come from struggling against our origins.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

The Fairie Queene makes cinema out of the west's primary principle: to see is to know; to know is to control. The Spenserian eye cuts, wounds, rapes.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Woman's flirtatious arts of self-concealment mean man's approach must take the form of rape.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Not until all babies are born from glass jars will the combat cease between mother and son.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

The female body is a chthonian machine, indifferent to the spirit who inhabits it.

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Camille Paglia (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.