“The remedy, it seems to me, is quite as absurd as all the other sure cures that Liberals advocate. When they argue for it, they simply argue, in words but little changed, that the remedy for prostitution is to fill the bawdyhouses with virgins. My impression is that this last device would accomplish very little: either the virgins would leap out of the windows, or they would cease to be virgins.”
1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)
Context: Thus the ideal of democracy is reached at last: it has become a psychic impossibility for a gentleman to hold office under the Federal Union, save by a combination of miracles that must tax the resourcefulness even of God. The fact has been rammed home by a constitutional amendment: every office-holder, when he takes oath to support the Constitution, must swear on his honour that, summoned to the death-bed of his grandmother, he will not take the old lady a bottle of wine. He may say so and do it, which makes him a liar, or he may say so and not do it, which makes him a pig. But despite that grim dilemma there are still idealists, chiefly professional Liberals, who argue that it is the duty of a gentleman to go into politics—that there is a way out of the quagmire in that direction. The remedy, it seems to me, is quite as absurd as all the other sure cures that Liberals advocate. When they argue for it, they simply argue, in words but little changed, that the remedy for prostitution is to fill the bawdyhouses with virgins. My impression is that this last device would accomplish very little: either the virgins would leap out of the windows, or they would cease to be virgins.
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H.L. Mencken 281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes
The vision of Mary, p. 166
My Early Years (1968)
“My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.”
Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)
“[My husband Emilio] found the last remaining virgin in the '70s -- and that was me.”
Good Morning America radio interview (October 26, 2006)
2007, 2008
“Ladies, just a little more virginity, if you don't mind.”
Remembered by Alexander Woollcott in his Shouts and Murmurs (1922) p. 87.
To actresses playing the ladies-in-waiting in a production of Henry VIII, "peering at them plaintively through his monocle".
“Would you believe it's harder to find a virgin than a unicorn in New York?”
Source: Zombies Vs. Unicorns
“The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,
The matron's glance that would those looks reprove.”
Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 29.
“The soul, too, has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.”
"Normal Madness," Ch. 3, P. 56 http://books.google.com/books?id=apSwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22The+soul+too+has+her+virginity+and+must+bleed+a+little+before+bearing+fruit%22&pg=PA56#v=onepage
Dialogues in Limbo (1926)