{
  "type": "quote",
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    "language": "en",
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  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia/sexual-personae/nature-is-a-darwinian",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia/sexual-personae/nature-is-a-darwinian.json",
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  "id": "870a776b-3875-490d-8f43-73659903923a",
  "slug": "nature-is-a-darwinian",
  "text": "Nature is a Darwinian spectacle of the eaters and the eaten. All phases of procreation are ruled by appetite: sexual intercourse, from kissing to penetration, consists of movements of barely controlled cruelty and consumption. The long pregnancy of the human female and the protracted childhood of her infant, who is not self-sustaining for seven years or more, have produced the agon of psychological dependency that burdens the male for a lifetime. Man justifiably fears being devoured by woman, who is nature’s proxy.",
  "language": "en",
  "author": {
    "name": "Camille Paglia",
    "slug": "camille-paglia",
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  },
  "book": {
    "title": "Sexual Personae",
    "slug": "sexual-personae",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia/sexual-personae"
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  "character": null,
  "chapter": null,
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  "page": 16,
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  "topics": [
    {
      "name": "nature",
      "slug": "nature",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature"
    },
    {
      "name": "women",
      "slug": "women",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/women"
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  ],
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    "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia#Sexual_Personae:_Art_and_Decadence_from_Nefertiti_to_Emily_Dickinson_(1990)",
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      "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
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  "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:16",
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    {
      "id": "a1af4d02-0e3f-4501-b556-f9a887d8df99",
      "slug": "charisma-is-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia/sexual-personae/charisma-is-the",
      "text": "Charisma is the radiance produced by the interaction of male and female elements in a gifted personality. The charismatic woman has a masculine force and severity. The charismatic man has an entrancing female beauty. Both are hot and cold, glowing with presexual self-love.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 521,
      "verified": false,
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      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:49:18"
    },
    {
      "id": "9bd48fcc-6a2d-4399-99fa-36b2a8f3e923",
      "slug": "it-is-no-coincidence",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia/sexual-personae/it-is-no-coincidence",
      "text": "It is no coincidence that while some major female artists have married, very few have borne children. The issue is not conservation of energy but imaginative integrity. Art is its own self-swelling, proof that the mind is greater than the body.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 660,
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          "name": "art",
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          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art"
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        {
          "name": "motherhood",
          "slug": "motherhood",
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      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia#Sexual_Personae:_Art_and_Decadence_from_Nefertiti_to_Emily_Dickinson_(1990)",
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    },
    {
      "id": "50aa9207-c2d5-432e-b3e0-63601ebdd473",
      "slug": "women-have-been",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/camille-paglia/sexual-personae/women-have-been",
      "text": "Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials. But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper. Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome. Men's egotism, so disgusting in the talentless, is the source of their greatness as a sex. [...] Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species.",
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}