fiefoe

<Conversation:>

The most famous teacher of rhetoric, Gorgias, originally an ambassador to Athens from Syracuse, thought of himself as a magician, rhyming his phrases as though they were incantations.
The first known conversationalist was Socrates, who replaced this war of words by dialogue. <> Socrates' mother had been a midwife, and that is how he saw himself too. For ideas to be born, a midwife is needed.
Snobbery is to limit conversation. Disraeli described how it was done by the use of fashionable cliches: 'English is an expressive language but not difficult to master. Its range is limited. It consists, as far as I can observe, of four words: nice, jolly, charming and bore, and some grammarians add, fond.'
Madame de Rambouillet

<Sexual matters:>

in the Taiping rebellion (I850) 6,000 boy captives were castrated to be used as male prostitutes, complete with bound feet and heavy cosmetics.
The fairy tales which teach West African children about sex present it as a game of hide and seek, without ready-made solutions: the popular children's stories about the adventures of Mr Penis and Mrs Vulva are tragic farces,
The middle class learned how to do this(dating) from the working class, which was not corseted by the fear of meeting social inferiors.
Ancient Celtic warriors 'offered themselves to other men without the least compunction' and were offended if their advances were rejected.
In infancy sexual arousal results from a wide variety of causes, many of which have nothing to do with sex.
'One man does not have enough thoughts for one woman,' says a proverb of the Kung bushman tribe.
... even world conquerors like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar ('a husband to every wife and a wife to every husband').
The Frenchman La Rochefoucauld... attributed the populousness of Massachusetts to bundling. The practice survived there until 1827, Cape Cod being the last place to resist the genteel view that sitting on a sofa in a drawing-room was more proper.

Jan. 6th, 2007